ANGL04KISH  ESSAYS 


JOHN   EGLINTON 


■'^ '  \ 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 


ENDOWED  BY  THE 

mALECTIC  AND  PHILANTHROPIC 

SOQETIES 


0A9I3 

.M3 

1918 


7 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


10002539013 


This  book  is  due  at  the  LOUIS  R.  WILSON  LIBRARY  on  the 
last  date  stamped  under  "Date  Due."  If  not  on  hold  it  may  be 
renewed  by  bringing  it  to  the  library. 

DATE                    ^^^ 
DUE                       ^^^ 

DATE 

DUE                       ***^^ 

f  JUN  ^  b  /. 

JUN  8  0  '978  V 

APRll 

'19g8 

% 

L  ,    ,  .  . 

SEP  2 

^2004 

i^.                                     4- 

n^Pif^^   11    ^  9 

rj^^ 

mi- 

tn^ 

f.^^-.-           S/.3 

Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/angloirishessaysOOmage 


Anglo-Irish  Essays 


Anglo-Irish  Essays 


By 
JOHN    EGLINTON 


(  ^.Ll-Ut. 


1 


NEW    YORK 
JOHN    LANE    COMPANY 


MCMXVIII 


,  (^  t^ 


lO 


Printed  at 

ctie  CAiboc  pness 

89  Talbot  vStteet 
Dublin 


Contents 

Page 

Preface 

3 

The  Island  of  Saints 

8 

A  Neglected   Monument   of   Irish   Prose 

21 

The   Grand   Old   Tongue 

29 

The   Irish   Mythological   Cycle 

34 

The   Philosophy   of   the   Celtic   Movement 

41 

The   Best   Irish   Poem 

47 

St.   Patrick    on   the   Stage 

57 

Thomas   Moore   as  Theologian 

69 

Irish   Books 

79 

A  Way   of   Understanding   Nietzsche 

90 

Sincerity 

101 

Reafforestation 

110 

A  Cause 

119 

529329 


PREFACE 

The  essays  here  reprinted,  at  the  suggestion  of  some 
friends,  have  been  taken  chiefly  from  various  defunct 
Irish  magazines  and  newspapers  and  from  a  booklet 
of  which  the  remaining  copies  contributed  their  Httle 
flame  to  the  conflagrations  in  DubHn  during  the  Easter 
week  of  1916.*  The  title  refers  as  much  to  the  writer's 
point  of  view  as  to  the  subject-matter,  and  by  it  he 
would  suggest  that  the  Anglo-Irishman  has  been  left 
a  good  deal  out  of  account  in  recent  years,  any  return 
to  his  point  of  view,  or  indeed  any  mention  of  him, 
seeming  to  strike  a  dissonant  note  in  the  melodious 
concord  of  the  Irish  Literary  Renascence.  Perhaps, 
however,  '*  Irish  Ireland,"  deceived  by  that 
acquiescent  habit  of  mind  which  has  characterized 
the  Anglo-Irishman  since  the  Union,  needs  to  be 
reminded  that  he  is  still  there.  As  he  existed  in 
the  days  of  Protestant  Ascendancy  he  has  no  doubt 
vanished.  More  than  a  hundred  years,  in  which  he 
has  assisted  at  the  progress  of  democratic  ideals  in 
Ireland,  have  taught  him  tolerance,  have  infected  his 
Protestant  eudaemonism  with  a  melancholy 
scepticism,  have  mitigated  his  unsuspecting  selfishness 
and  caused  him  many  misgivings  as  he  conned  the 
records  of  his  past,  and  have  bound  him  by  new  and 
inextricable  ties  to  the  ancient  population  of  this 
island — in   a   word,    have    improved   him   out   of   all 

*  Thanks  are  due  to   The  New  Statesman  for  leave  to  reprint 
from  it  one  or  two  contributions. 
B 


4  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

recognition  as  the  descendant  of  the  old  rollicking 
Irishman  of  the  eighteenth  century.  A  less  invidious 
name  for  the  Anglo- Irishman  would  now  perhaps  be 
the  Modern  Irishman,  the  Irishman,  namely,  who 
accepts  as  a  good  European  the  connection  with  Great 
Britain  and  yet  feels  himself  to  be  far  more  distinct 
from  the  Anglo-Saxon  than  he  is  from  the  Mere 
Irishman. 

It  has  always  been  the  instinctive  policy  of  English 
government  to  ignore  the  existence  of  this  race,  which 
it  snubbed  and  over-ruled  all  through  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  and  at  which,  far  more  than 
at  the  Catholic  Irish,  it  aimed  the  Act  of  Union. 
During  the  nineteenth  century  this  race  almost 
disappears  from  history :  its  sons  are  over  all  the 
world  and  those  who  remain  at  home  are  silent,  the 
objects  of  misunderstanding  and  abuse.  Yet  never 
for  a  moment  does  the  Modern  Irishman,  while  he 
looks  on  with  detachment  at  the  sectarian  animosities 
of  Limerick  and  Belfast,  laughs  at  the  Language 
Movement  (to  which  he  generally  subscribes),  and 
endeavours  to  enter  into  the  romantic  ideals  of  the 
Sinn  Feiners,  cease  to  feel  it  to  be  a  matter  of 
seif-gratulation  that  he  is  an  Irishman.  We  first 
notice  the  inconsistency  in  Dean  Swift,  who  is  usually 
represented  (like  the  Duke  of  Wellington)  as  having 
been  ashamed  of  his  country,  but  who  when  in 
England  was  probably  fully  sensible  of  the  privilege  of 
spiritual  emancipation  conferred  on  him  by  his  Anglo- 
Irish  nationality.  This  is  a  point  on  which  we  feel 
ourselves,  frankly,  to  be  the  superiors  of  all  the  world. 
We  have  next  to  no  intellectual  prepossessions.  This 
open-mindedness  makes  us  ideal  cosmopolitans,  and 


PREFACE  3 

enables  us  beyond  other  races  to  live  by  our  wits  in 
London  and  elsewhere.  It  serves  us  well  in  the  posts 
which  we  accept  all  over  the  British  Empire,  and  adds 
a  useful  and  truly  imperial  tinge  to  the  character  ol 
British  rule  throughout  the  colonies  and  dependencies. 
Akin  to  this  open-mindedness  is  the  generosity  with 
which  we  have  made  a  present  to  English  literature 
of  our  considerable  achievements  therein,  never  having 
thought  it  worth  while  to  keep  a  separate  account  of 
our  share  in  it ;  just  as  we  have  made  a  present  to  the 
Mere  Irish  of  the  stand  which  we  made  for  our  liberties 
in  the  eighteenth  century.  We  have,  moreover, 
augmented  the  potentialities  of  our  intellectual  life  by 
never  pressing  to  a  conclusion  the  Protestant  and 
Roman  Catholic  controversy,  the  Protestant  and  the 
Catholic  each  holding  in  a  perfectly  friendly  way  that 
the  intellectual  position  of  the  other  is  impossible; 
and  we  live  amicably  together,  those  of  us  who  are 
Catholics  being  as  little  capable  of  starting  an 
Inquisition  as  our  Protestants  of  starting  a  Salvation 
Army. 

Undoubtedly,  if  our  race  were  to  rouse  and  realise 
itself  as  a  new  and  freshly  compounded  race  the  whole 
situation  in  Ireland  would  be  transformed.  Intellectual 
and  political  life  would  find  their  true  centre,  and  a 
great  many  things  and  persons  now  appearing  at  the 
centre  of  Irish  life  would  find  their  proper  place  at  its 
outskirts.  To  this  race  destiny  entrusted  the  task  ol 
unifying  and  governing  Ireland  as  clearly  as  to  the 
Anglo-Norman  race  it  committed  the  task  of  unifying 
and  governing  England:  and  towards  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  we  seemed  in  a  fair  way  to  fulfil 
our   trust.     But   when   the   premature   introduction   of 


6  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

democratic  ideas  into  Ireland  at  the  time  of  the  French 
Revolution  led  to  a  completely  artificial  political 
situation,  in  which  the  country's  natural  rulers  had 
to  look  on  while  England  made  what  bargain  she 
could  with  the  subject  race,  the  Modern  Irishman  lost 
interest  to  a  great  extent  in  his  own  country.  That 
almost  culpable  freedom  from  sentimental  pre- 
possession which  has  been  noted  as  one  of  our  chief 
characteristics  is  strikingly  apparent  in  the  fact  that 
while  the  Mere  Irishman  still  cherishes  passionately 
the  names  of  such  shadowy  persons  as  Brian 
Boroimhe,  the  Modern  Irishman  has  almost  forgotten 
the  achievements  of  his  great-grandfathers  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  of  which  Froude's  History 
contains  so  perverse  a  travesty.  If  we  can  imagine 
the  government  of  the  United  States  of  America,  after 
the  achievement  of  independence,  conniving  under 
the  threat  of  invasion  and  insurrection  at  the 
restoration  of  the  old  colonial  government,  and  leaving 
the  tradition  of  Washington  and  Alexander  Hamilton 
in  the  air,  we  shall  have  an  image  on  an  extended 
scale  of  what  happened  to  the  Modern  Irish  when, 
after  the  Union,  the  memory  of  Grattan  and  the 
Volunteers  had  become  a  dream.  Their  political 
genius  surely  did  not  exhaust  itself  in  the  wonderful 
group  of  orators  in  Grattan's  Parliament,  and  if  they 
could  have  been  left  to  themselves  instead  of  being 
bribed  to  accept  the  Union  would  surely  have  been 
equal  to  the  strange  situation  in  which  they  would 
have  found  themselves  when  the  old  Celtic  nationality 
woke  up  into  the  democratic  era.  They  would  have 
made  mistakes  certainly,  but  in  the  end  they  would 
have  convinced  the  Mere  Irish  that,  at  any  rate,  they 


PREFACE  7 

had  to  be  lived  with  (as  it  is,  the  Sinn  Fein  doctrine 
of  the  Mere  Irish  hardly  allows  our  right  to  exist),  and 
there  was  always  England  to  bring  the  whole 
population  together  in  a  sense  of  their  common 
interest. 

Frankly,  one  cannot  feel  surprised  that  England 
took  alarm  at  this  prospect.  Possibly  she  chose  the 
best  way.  It  remains  none  the  less  true  that  a  race 
before  which  was  opening  the  most  exhilarating 
prospects  suddenly  found  itself  deprived  of  its  destiny 
in  this  country.  If  any  doubt  occurred  to  Pitt  and 
Castlereagh  that  they  would  have  a  race  on  their 
hands  with  its  occupation  gone,  they  probably  said 
to  themselves  that  plenty  of  work  would  be  found  for 
this  race  in  helping  England  to  govern  the  colonies; 
and  in  fact,  as  already  said,  the  political  virtue  of  the 
Anglo-Irish  and  Scotch-Irish  since  the  Union  has  gone 
into  the  management  of  the  Empire.  And  if  there 
had  been  enough  posts  to  go  round,  we  might  have 
acquiesced  in  our  disappearance  from  history.  But 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  a  good  many  of  us  had  to 
remain  at  home,  and  it  was  hardly  to  be  expected 
that  we  should  rest  content  in  an  attitude  of  mere 
open-mindedness.  Pitt,  for  instance,  made  one  of  the 
bitterest  enemies  English  rule  in  Ireland  has  ever  had 
by  neglecting  to  answer  an  application  for  a  colonial 
appointment  from  a  young  member  of  our  race  of  the 
name  of  Wolfe  Tone.  Under  these  conditions  we 
often,  in  fact,  become  bad  citizens.  We  ourselves 
may  be  comfortable  and  satisfied  as  Castle  officials, 
judges,  sinecurists,  etc.,  but  our  sons  and  daughters 
chafe  at  our  provincial  atmosphere,  amaze  us  by  their 
petulant  outbreaks,  and  set  up  as  rebels.     This  is  the 


8  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

phenomenon  known  from  the  earhest  times  of  English 
rule  in  Ireland,  and  exemplified  in  numerous  families 
throughout  Ireland  to-day,  of  the  Anglo-Irish 
becoming  **  more  Irish  than  the  Irish  themselves." 
Wherever  there  has  been  any  ferment  of  revolutionary 
ideas,  any  threatening  movement  of  hitherto  inert 
because  leaderless  masses,  it  will  usually  be  found 
that  one  of  us  has  been  mixing  himself  with  action 
lest  he  should  wither  by  despair.  During  the  early 
part  of  the  nineteenth  century  we  looked  on  rather 
frigidly  while  0*Connell  was  persuading  the  Catholic 
peasantry  that  they  were  just  as  respectable  as  the 
Protestants,  and  was  making  them  talk  English  and 
dress  like  squireens ;  but  when  in  his  old  age  he  made 
a  speech  in  which  he  said  that  no  political  liberty  was 
worth  a  drop  of  human  blood,  it  was  more  than  our 
young  men  could  stand,  and  they  began  about  that 
time  to  take  the  Irish  masses  in  hand  themselves. 
The  cold  and  self-conscious  Parnell  was  far  less  an 
impersonation  of  the  race-hatred  of  the  Mere  Irishman 
towards  England  than  of  the  pent-up  wrath  of  the 
Modern  Irishman  at  not  having  a  proper  outlet  in  his 
own  country  for  his  character  and  talents. 

In  the  recent  Insurrection,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
might  seem  that  the  passions  and  ideals  of  the  Mere 
Irishman  were  alone  engaged,  but  that  is  hardly  true. 
For  the  ideals,  at  any  rate,  we  must,  I  fear,  accept 
the  larger  share  of  the  responsibility,  though  our  great 
quality  of  open-mindedness  converted  us  into  curious 
but  disinterested  spectators  when  these  ideals  were 
suddenly  enacted  in  our  midst.  Our  attitude  through- 
out the  disturbances  must,  in  fact,  have  seemed  a  little 
ambiguous    to    anyone    unacquainted    with    the   inner 


PREFACE  9 

history  of  the  Irish  Literary  Movement.  For  the  past 
quarter  of  a  century  we  have  taken  over  from  the 
Mere  Irishman  all  his  terms  and  traditions,  and  have 
been  chanting  the  sorrows  of  Kathleen  ni  Houlahan 
in  strains  **  more  Irish  "  than  anything  in  the  ancient 
language  of  the  country.  Theoretically,  this  literature 
ought  to  be  in  that  language,  as  we  would,  regretfully, 
be  the  first  to  admit;  just  as  the  Agnostics  and 
Protestants  who  have  chiefly  produced  this  literature 
ought  in  theory  to  be  pious  Catholics.  The  pretence 
that  the  Modern  Irishman  is  the  Mere  Irishman  always 
imparted  something  of  a  Delia  Cruscan  artificiality  to 
the  literary  movement  which  ended  in  bloodshed  in 
Easter  Week.  It  would  have  far  better  become  the 
Modern  Irishman  to  remember  that  if  Ireland  is  still 
unreconciled  to  the  part  which  history  and  geography 
have  assigned  to  it,  the  fault  is  mainly  his  :  and  that 
instead  of  adopting  for  literary  purposes  the  religious 
and  race  antipathies  of  the  Mere  Irish,  and  stultifying 
his  own  past  by  accepting  from  them  an  obscurantist 
mythology  of  which  the  chief  figure  is  some  hobgoblin 
called  England,  it  was  for  him  to  introduce  new  and 
unassailable  ideals  of  nationality,  to  sink  the  wells  of 
thought  beneath  the  barren  surface  of  tradition  and 
to  bring  Ireland  into  political  and  spiritual  unity. 

Happily  there  is  in  Ireland  something  older  than 
race  distinctions,  older  than  the  Catholic  Church,  older 
than  archaeology,  older  even  than  the  gods — Mothei 
Nature  herself,  in  whose  presence  the  poet  can  forget 
the  squalid  animosities  of  race  and  creed.  The  future 
of  Irish  literature  is  mainly  an  affair  between  the  poet 
and  this  kindly  mother,  as  she  manifests  herself  to 
the  solitary  thinker  on  the  hills  and  plains  of  Ireland. 


ANGLO-IRISH     ESSAYS 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SAINTS 

:HAT  *'  East  is  East  and  West  is  West  " — 
in  other  words,  that  human  nature  in 
the  East  and  human  nature  in  the  West 
are  essentially  different — is  accepted 
usually  as  a  sufficient  account  of  the  fact 
that  what  we  call  **  universal '*  religions  have  as  yet 
appeared  only  in  the  East.  The  mere  statement  of 
the  fact  has  come  to  seem  a  kind  of  explanation  of  it. 
The  real  explanation  more  probably  is  conveyed  in  the 
saying  of  the  Egyptian  priest  to  Solon,  in  Plato's 
Timaeus  :  **  O  Solon,  Solon,  you  Greeks  are  always 
children,  and  old  man  among  you  there  is  none." 
**  How  so?"  asked  Solon.  **  You  are  all  young," 
said  the  priest,  **  in  your  souls;  for  you  have  in  them 
no  settled  opinion  confirmed  through  hearsay  from  of 
old,  and  no  knowledge  hoary  with  time."  The  infant 
nationalities  of  modern  Europe  were  for  many 
centuries  the  pupils  of  a  religion  which  came  to  them 
with  all  the  authority  of  that  civilisation  of  which  they 
were  the  heirs,  and  it  was  their  part,  not  all  at  once 
to  found  a  religion  of  their  own,  but  to  submit  to 
authority,  and  to  content  themselves  with  such  answers 
as  were  vouchsafed  to  their  first  questionings .  The  great 
religions,  which  have  something  in  them  to  which  a 
whole  civilisation  can  look  up,  are  the  results  of  ages 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SAINTS  II 

of  silent  thought,  and  of  the  independent  contributions 
of  many  schools.  Give  us  a  little  time — at  least  a 
few  centuries  longer — and  in  the  mouth  of  a  new 
Buddha  the  conflicting  tendencies  of  modern  thought 
will  blend  in  fresh  oracles,  as  the  lore  of  Babylon, 
Assyria,  Persia,  and  Egypt  were  blended  in  Judaism, 
or  as  Judaism  was  blended  with  the  Greek  spirit  in 
Christianity.  The  Christian  Church,  deputed  by 
ancient  Rome  to  instruct  the  nations  of  the  West, 
made  modern  civilisation  possible  by  the  unity  which 
she  imposed  among  these  barbarous  young  Titans. 
But  with  the  first  manifestations  of  the  thinking  faculty 
in  these  nations,  Christianity,  as  at  first  accepted,  at 
once  began  to  be  modified  in  all  of  them.  True, 
these  nationalities  soon  found  themselves  ranged 
against  one  another  under  the  names  *'  Protestant  '* 
and  '*  Catholic,"  the  Protestant  nations  openly 
avowing  their  impious  new  departure  in  religious 
matters,  while  the  Catholic  nations  made  a  parade  of 
loyalty  to  their  old  teacher.  But  though  without 
doubt  the  Protestant  nations  found  hemselves  able, 
or  obliged,  to  tolerate  a  freedom  of  thought  considered 
disloyal  in  Catholic  countries,  we  must  not  allow 
ourselves  to  think  that  these  theologico-political  terms 
represent  any  real  division  in  that  modern  spirit  which 
had  awakened  in  Catholic  and  Protestant  nations 
alike.  As  things  have  worked  out,  it  has  in  fact  come 
to  be  a  matter  of  doubt  whether  the  modern  spirit 
gained  so  much  by  having  in  Protestant  countries  the 
self-complacency  and  worldly  indifference  of  the 
average  man  professedly  on  its  side.  In  France,  for 
instance,  which  till  our  own  age  has  been  called  a 
Catholic  country,  chiefly  because  it  never  chose  to  call 


12  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

itself  Protestant,  or  to  modify  the  forms  of  its  popular 
religion,  the  modern  spirit  has  perhaps  made  things 
easier  for  itself  than  in  any  Protestant  country.  The 
terms  have  an  historical  and  political,  hardly  an 
essentially  religious  meaning;  and  in  all  countries  the 
real  conflict  is  between  intellectual  hardihood  and 
pious  Epicureanism,  between  genius  and  indifference, 
knowledge  and  ignorance,  initiative  and  irresolution. 
Perhaps  fifty,  almost  certainly  a  hundred  years  hence, 
the  terms  Protestant  and  Catholic  will  be  as  obsolete 
as  V/hig  and  Tory  are  to-day.  Except  in  Ireland, 
and  one  or  two  other  countries  where  religion  and 
politics  insist  on  confusedly  adopting  one  another's 
terms,  the  question  of  personal  belief  has  generally 
come  to  be  recognised  as  a  very  much  deeper  one 
than  whether  we  are  ''Protestant"  or  "Catholic," 
"Christian"  or  "infidel."  Our  real  beliefs  belong 
to  the  subconscious  part  of  our  nature,  and  surprise, 
and  perhaps  horrify,  ourselves  as  much  as  they  could 
anyone  else  when  they  emerge  occasionally. 

Modern  Ireland  remains  a  "  Catholic "  country, 
more  strictly  than  France  or  even  Spain,  chiefly,  we 
must  hold,  because  its  religious  consciousness  in 
modern  times  has  never  really  been  awakened.  We 
may  even  say  that  if  Protestantism  and  Catholicism 
do  indeed  represent  two  essentially  different  religious 
tendencies,  we  are  not  yet  able  to  say  whether  Ireland 
is  naturally  Protestant  or  Catholic,  for  the  alternatives 
have  never  really  been  brought  before  it  to  choose 
between.  There  is  even  some  reason  to  think  that  a 
country  which  produced  Scotus  Erigena  and  Virgil  of 
Salzburg;  a  country  to  which  Christianity  first  came 
in  the  form  of  the  Pelagian  heresy ;  a  country  in  which 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SAINTS  13 

the  national  church  at  the  height  of  the  religious 
movement  in  the  seventh  century  excited,  by  reason 
of  its  independent  spirit,  the  keen  hostility  of  the 
mother  church  at  Rome,  had  a  natural  turn  for  what 
comfortable  people  call  haresy,  but  what  we  prefer 
to  call  a  disposition  to  take  religious  and  intellectual 
questions  seriously.  The  Celtic  Church — a  church, 
as  Warren  says,  **  having  its  own  litany,  its  own 
translation  of  the  Bible,  its  own  mode  of  chanting, 
its  own  monastic  rule,  its  own  cycle  for  the  calculation 
of  Easter,  and  presenting  both  internal  and  external 
evidence  of  a  complete  autonomy  "—-was  hardly,  as 
has  been  pretended,  an  early  form  of  Protestantism, 
but  may  at  least  be  called  a  separate  branch  of  the 
Apostolic  Church;  and  the  Epistles  of  Saint  Patrick, 
if  they  have  not  a  Lutheran  flavour,  have  at  least  one 
distinctly  Pauline.  There  came  very  near  to  being, 
as  Ritchie  says,  another  great  branch  of  the  Christian 
Church,  beside  the  Greek  and  the  Roman,  namely 
the  Celtic,  which,  had  the  fates  proved  propitious, 
would  in  all  likelihood  have  been  the  first  to  produce 
its  Luther,  its  Pascal  or  its  Tolstoi,  and  so  perhaps 
have  had  its  turn  in  the  spiritual  hegemony  of 
Christendom. 

The  true  nature  of  that  extraordinary  period  of 
religious  exaltation  through  which  Ireland  passed 
between  the  fifth  and  the  eighth  centuries,  and  why  it 
vanished  without  leaving  any  germ  of  development 
in  the  national  character,  will  always  remain  some- 
thing of  a  riddle.  When  we  read  of  the  solitaries  who 
dwelt  in  the  laurae  of  the  Thebaid  and  of  Palestine 
at  the  close  of  the  antique  ages,  we  are  accustomed 
to  think  of  them  as  fugitives  from  a  corrupt  civilisation. 


14  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

But  in  Ireland,  a  country  of  primitive  institutions  and 
manners,  of  nature-worship,  and  without  even  a  word 
to  express  the  notion  of  sin,  suddenly  appears  all  that 
passion  for  seclusion,  for  mortification  and  abnegation, 
the  flight  from  the  world,  the  ingenuity  in  contriving 
romantic  forms  of  penance,  and  even  something  of  the 
delight  of  solitary  communion  with  nature,  which  we 
generally  think  of  in  connection  with  social  decadence 
or  revolution.  It  is  necessary  to  believe  both  that 
Irish  life  included  great  extremes  of  good  and  evil, 
and  that  there  was  a  good  deal  in  Druidism,  or  what 
the  poets  called  the  **  old  law  of  the  men  of  Erin," 
which  prepared  them  for  Christianity.  The  old  Celtic 
world,  driven  into  narrow  compass  by  the  Roman 
empire,  had  seen  its  most  sacred  places  desecrated 
with  impunity,  and  was  already  filled  with 
premonitory  influences  of  Apostolic  Christianity  when 
the  new  faith  made  what  we  may  call  its  state  entry 
into  the  country  with  Patrick  and  his  missionary  band. 
The  English  had  not  yet  landed  at  Thanet  when  the 
early  missionaries,  inconvenienced  so  far  as  one  can 
learn  mainly  by  some  rough  practical  jokes  of  the  old 
Druidic  party,  were  freely  wending  their  way  about 
the  country,  distributing  the  Gospels  and  the  books  of 
the  law.  Some  explanation  of  the  prodigious  success 
of  the  mission  may  doubtless  be  found  in  the  character 
of  Patrick,  whom  we  have  only  to  contrast  with  that 
dry  ecclesiastic,  Augustine  of  Canterbury,  to  see  what 
the  advantage  was  of  having  a  religious  genius  at  the 
head  of  an  evangelical  campaign.  The  author  of  the 
**  Confession  "  (if  not  Patrick,  then  someone  else  of 
the  same  name) — *'  Saint  Patrick,"  as  he  is  styled, 
though  not  we  believe  officially — '*  Patrick,  a  sinner,** 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SAINTS  13 

as  he  preferred  to  call  himself — was  indeed  the  last 
of  the  apostles,  the  spiritual  brother  of  St.  Paul, 
though,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  with  limitations 
which  remained  the  limitations  of  Celtic  Christianity. 
The  bewilderment  which  he  expresses  at  his  own 
success  (*'  I,  a  fool!")  has  all  the  naivete  of  a  great 
man  unconscious  of  the  magnetic  power  of  a  genuine 
personality.  But  besides  the  advantage  of  Patrick's 
personality,  Christianity  seems  to  have  been  able  to 
profit  by  an  imbroglio  arising  out  of  the  defection  from 
Druidism,  about  a  century  and  a  half  previously,  of 
the  great  king  Cormac,  who  is  said  finally  to  have 
been  slain  by  the  Druids  for  having  renounced  their 
teaching.  The  bards,  we  may  believe,  went  mostly 
with  their  king,  and  there  was  a  consequent  division 
between  bardism  and  Druidism  which  proved  highly 
serviceable  to  Patrick-  Even  in  our  own  day,  when 
so  many  of  our  poets  and  novelists  are  agnostics, 
theosophists,  etc.,  we  know  that  they  have  done  a 
good  deal  to  undermine  established  religion,  and  in 
the  time  of  Patrick  it  is  clear  that  with  the  bards  on 
his  side  half  the  battle  was  gained.  We  read  that 
on  his  arrival  at  the  court  of  Laeghaire,  the  chief  poet 
of  Erin  rose  up  to  do  honour  to  him  at  his  entrance. 
In  fact  when  Ireland  became,  as  it  presently  did,  an 
**  Island  of  Saints,"  it  would  seem  that  the  latter  were 
chiefly  converted  bards,  in  whose  way  of  life  it  did 
not  perhaps  at  first  make  so  very  much  difference  to 
become  **  saints."  The  notion  of  acquiring  super- 
natural power  by  means  of  fasting  and  chastity,  and 
by  a  solitary  life,  was  quite  congenial  and  familiar  to 
Druidism,  as  were  also  the  doctrines  of  the  one  God 
and  of  immortality.     The  sacred  and  remote  places  of 


16  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

Druidism  continued  to  be  the  sacred  places  of  the 
monks,  who  had  supplemented  the  old  magic  with 
the  magic  of  baptism  and  the  Psaltery.  So  close  was 
the  connection  of  Christianity  with  bardism  that  it 
seems  to  have  been  expected  of  a  *'  saint  "  (and  quite 
rightly)  that  he  should  also  be  **  a  bit  of  a  poet  " ;  and 
all  their  canticles  bear  witness,  less  to  any  real  under- 
standing of  Christianity,  than  to  an  acknowledgment 
in  it  of  a  superior  magic,  as  in  the  "Breastplates" 
of  Patrick  and  of  Columba  : 

*'  I  adore  not  the  voice  of  birds, 
Nor  a  sneezing,  nor  a  destiny,  nor  the  earthly  world. 
Nor  a  son,  nor  chance,  nor  woman; 
My  Druid  is  Christ,  the  son  of  God, 
Christ  the  son  oj  Mary,  the  great  Abbot, 
The  Father,  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost/' 

Indeed,  we  have  only  to  look  anywhere  into  the 
Hymns  or  the  Lives  of  the  early  saints  to  find  support 
for  our  theory  that  these  saints  were  chiefly  bards 
cast  loose  from  Druidism.  That  the  bards  were 
numerous  enough  to  make  themselves  a  public 
nuisance  from  time  to  time  is  well  known;  and  the 
close  association  of  the  early  Church  with  the  bards 
appears  in  the  account  of  the  Convention  of  Drum- 
ketta,  more  than  a  century  after  Patrick,  when  the 
Church  came  to  the  rescue  of  the  bardic  order, 
threatened  with  extinction  by  the  High  King.  The 
immense  number  of  these  saints  excites  our  suspicion 
almost  as  much  as  the  number  of  bards  raises  one's 
doubts  as  to  the  existence  among  them  of  any  genuine 
poet.     Any  rogue  who  had  submitted  his  head  to  the 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SAINTS  17 

tonsure,  who  fasted,  and  who  could  repeat  the  Psalter, 
was  ipso  jacto  a  saint,  just  as  the  standing  of  a  bard 
was  determined  by  the  number  of  tales  he  had  by 
heart.  Those  devotees  who  made  their  abode  on  the 
top  of  the  Skelligs  or  of  Slieve  Gullion;  who  got  into 
coracles  and  drifted  out  to  sea  without  oars  or  rudder, 
and  sometimes  threw  away  the  loaves  they  had 
brought  with  them ;  or  who  tried  in  the  name  of  Christ 
to  float  stones  on  the  lake,  were  many  of  them,  we 
may  believe,  the  Quixotes  of  the  old  Druidic  world, 
which  indeed  lingered  on  for  many  centuries  after 
them.  There  is  really  nothing  to  choose  between  the 
morale  of  the  bard  and  of  the  saint,  as  he  appears  in 
the  legends,  where  he  has  parted  with  none  of  the 
privileges  of  magical  power  and  authority.  Columba 
himself  has  hardly  more  unction  than  Aitherne;  and 
even  his  respected  biographer  Adamnan,  we  are  told, 
retained  a  monk  to  tell  his  lies  for  him.  The  un- 
regenerate  character  of  the  Irish  saints  struck  Giraldus 
Cambrensis,  who  wrote  one  of  his  chapters  under  the 
heading,  '*  That  the  saints  of  this  country  appear  to 
have  been  of  a  vindictive  temper."  There  is  nothing 
to  indicate,  what  must  of  course  have  been  to  some 
extent  the  case,  that  Christianity  came  to  Erin  as  the 
satisfaction  of  any  speculative  or  spiritual  need ; 
nothing  to  compare,  for  example,  with  the  speech  of 
the  Northumbrian  alderman  at  the  council  held  to 
consider  the  mission  of  Paulinus.  The  Aposolic 
fervour  and  self-consciousness  which  Patrick  brought 
with  him  from  Gaul  were  a  good  deal  lost  on  the 
volatile  men  of  Erin,  and  indeed  it  is  absurd  to  think 
of  him  as  converting  the  Irish  in  any  sense  in  which 
Wesley  or  D.  L.  Moody  would  have  understood  the 


18  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

word.  He  came  to  exorcise  demons,  to  baptize,  to 
shave,  not,  as  our  patriotic  poets  and  artists  would 
have  us  believe,  to  conduct  a  series  of  evangelistic 
services.  His  impressive  appearance  and  costume, 
the  melodious  moaning  of  his  chanting  clerics  and 
bell-ringing  on  the  silent  plains,  the  magical  clair- 
voyance which  enabled  him  to  see  demons  perched  on 
the  shoulders  of  kings,  the  impunity  with  which  he 
violated  the  sacred  rites  of  the  Druids,  his  dangerous 
assiduity  in  prayer  and  fasting,  and  the  formidable 
sincerity  of  his  curses,  all  bespoke  a  superior  power 
which  confounded  the  magicians  of  ancient  Erin,  as 
Moses  confounded  those  of  Egypt.  His  writings 
express  no  elation  at  the  realization  of  his  youthful 
dreams,  and  it  must  be  confessed  no  great  pleasure 
in  the  society  of  his  new  converts,  whom  he  would 
gladly  have  left  but  that  the  '*  voices  "  which  he  heard 
had  told  him  that  he  must  not  again  return  to  his 
friends.  He  had  brought  the  ends  of  the  earth  within 
the  fold  of  the  Church,  yet  the  world  continued,  and 
he  ceased  wearily  to  take  account  of  the  number  of 
persons  whom  he  baptized  so  indiscriminately.  He 
had  turned  the  bards  into  clerics,  and  in  the  Ireland 
which  he  left  behind  him — in  which  the  solemn  note 
of  personal  religion  in  the  **  Confession "  was  not 
taken  up  by  any  of  his  successors- — it  was  bardism 
which  took  advantage  of  the  use  of  the  writing-tablets 
which   he   had   brought   with   him.  The   literature 

which  rose  in  this  country  out  of  the  mission  of  Patrick 
— unlike  those  literatures  which  rose  in  England  and 
Gaul  out  of  the  missions  of  Augustine  and  Martin  of 
Tours — is  the  expression  of  that  primitive  paganism 
which  Christianity  came  to  cast  out. 


THE  ISLAND  OF  SAINTS  19 

It  is  interesting  to  remember  these  things  at  a  time 
when  a  kind  of  exreme  unction  is  being  administered 
to  the  expiring  language  of  this  country,  as  *' piety's 
own  Celtic  tongue";  whereas  in  truth  Christianity 
never  learned  to  express  itself  in  Irish.  The  *'  Island 
of  Saints,"  or  Celtic  Ireland,  is  that  country  which 
throughout  its  whole  history  has  never  produced  a 
saint,  understanding  by  the  word  a  religious  genius. 
What  strikes  an  outsider  in  first  approaching  the  Irish 
language,  with  the  patriotic  intention  of  mastering  it, 
is  that  it  suffers  from  the  same  want  from  which  the 
spirit  of  Irish  nationality  has  suffered,  namely,  that  it 
has  never  undergone  a  spiritual  discipline  :  it  still 
retains  a  rude  flavour  as  of  a  language  which  has 
never  properly  been  to  school.  It  did  not  happen  to 
the  Irish  language,  as  to  the  Anglo-Saxon,  to  lose  and 
find  itself,  to  go  under  bondage,  to  hew  wood  and 
draw  water,  and  on  a  day  to  find  itself  stronger  than 
its  taskmaster  and  to  enter  into  all  his  possessions. 
It  is  objected  to  the  English  language,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  it  is  "saturated  with  Protestantism" — 
that  "  Teutonic  development  of  Christianity  "  of  which 
there  has  never  been  what  seemed  at  first  promised, 
a  Celtic  counterpart.  The  English  language  is 
saturated,  at  any  rate,  like  all  successful  languages, 
with  a  spiritual  quality,  not  derived  exclusively  or 
perhaps  even  chiefly  from  Anglo-Saxon  sources,  and 
certainly  not  from  Protestantism,  but  from  a  long 
discipline  and  development  through  which  it  has  come 
to  be  an  element  in  which  thought  can  breathe  and 
minds  live  and  produce  after  their  kind.  True,  the 
history  of  the  English  language  has  given  its  thought 
a  trend  which  perhaps  may  with  a  little  unfairness  be 
C 


20  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

styled,  as  Newman  styled  it,  Protestant.  But  if  the 
English  language  be  saturated  with  Protestantism, 
with  what  is  the  Irish  language  saturated?  Listen  to 
the  last  mutter ings  of  the  '*  Grand  Old  Tongue,"  and 
you  will  hear  it  babbling  of  the  fancies  of  its  youth, 
in  the  days  before  Patrick.  It  was  only  with  the 
introduction  of  the  English  language,  and  when 
Ireland  began  to  be  affected  indirectly  by  the 
Reformation,  that  it  became  the  pious  nationality  that 
we  know. 

1905. 


A  NEGLECTED  MONUMENT  OF  IRISH  PROSE 

^HE  question,  Why  did  Ireland  reject  the 
Bible?  is  closely  connected  with  another 
question,  Why  did  Ireland  fail  in 
literature?  not  so  much  that  Ireland's 
final  rejection  of  the  Bible  was  the  cause 
of  its  failure  in  literature,  as  that  both  of  these  things 
have  come  of  a  peculiarity  of  her  spiritual  history  from 
the  earliest  times — the  complete  separation  in  it  of 
things  sacred  and  things  profane.  In  all  countries 
literature  begins  to  be  national  with  a  claim  made  on 
behalf  of  the  people  to  think  for  themselves.  It  was 
so  in  England  in  the  age  of  Chaucer,  Langland,  and 
Wyclif.  It  was  so  in  France  a  century  earlier  when 
Jean  de  Meung,  in  his  continuation  of  the  Romance 
oj  the  Rose,  initiated  the  people,  not  without  a  good 
deal  of  scandal,  into  a  **  philosophy  wholly 
emancipated  from  theology."  But  literature  in 
Ireland  never  took  the  great  questions  of  life  and 
destiny  into  its  own  hands.  The  people,  in  the  person 
of  any  great  reformer  or  poet,  never  claimed  the  right 
to  think.  No  genius  ever  arose  out  of  the  gulf  set 
between  things  sacred  and  things  profane.  The 
literatures  of  France  and  England  grew  up  with  the 
freedom  of  thought,  and  finally  became  the  national 
organs  for  the  expression  of  the  mind  of  those  nations ; 
but   Ireland,   more   and   more   in   the   course   of   its 


22  Anglo-Irish  essays 

history,  has  abandoned  thought  and  speculation  to  a 
rehgious  order  holding  itself  aloof,  or  at  any  rate 
distinct,  from  the  national  life.  Irish  literature  and 
Irish  religion  have  maintained  two  distinct  and  partly 
hostile  traditions;  so  that  it  has  been  the  curious 
destiny  of  Ireland,  not  only  to  have  been  the  **  Island 
of  Saints,'*  one  of  the  chief  refuges  of  Christianity  in 
the  early  Middle  Ages,  but  to  be  the  last  home  in 
Europe  of  what  we  call  Paganism,  the  country  where 
the  kind  of  life  portrayed  in  primitive  literatures  has 
lasted  longest. 

The  great  national  book  of  the  Hebrews  seemed  at 
one  time  likely  enough  to  become  in  Ireland,  what  it 
has  been  in  so  many  countries,  the  begetter  of  an 
original  literature.  Patrick  and  Finn  Barr,  it  is  told, 
went  about  the  country  distributing  the  Gospels  and 
the  Books  of  the  Law.  Ancient  Irish  literature,  by 
the  very  form  of  its  annals  and  many  of  its  narratives, 
bears  witness  to  the  familiarity  of  those  who  wrote  it 
down  with  the  Hebrew  Scriptures.  Ireland,  at  the 
close  of  the  seventh  century,  when  Christianity  lay 
brooding  here  in  a  sort  of  halcyon  calm  and  a  gentler 
temper  fell  upon  its  bards  and  heroes;  that  Ireland 
into  which  the  poem  of  Prince  Aldfrid  of  Northumbria 
gives  us  a  glimpse,  **  Inisfail  the  Fair" — that 
inoffensive,  pensive  Ireland,  where  all  things  were 
going  well,  on  which  Fate,  without  a  particle  of 
provocation,  suddenly  let  loose  her  yelling  dogs  of 
destruction,  her  Danes  and  Saxons — if  it  could  only 
have  continued !  Those,  indeed,  were  Ireland's 
palmy  days,  and  let  no  ruthless  historian  destroy  her 
belief  in  them.     It  was  long  afterwards,  in  the  twelfth 


MONUMENT  OF  IRISH  PROSE  23 

century,  after  her  first  sorrows  had  come  upon  her, 
that  Ireland,  north  and  south,  passed  under  the  regular 
authority  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  This  silent  and 
gradual  supplanting  of  the  once  glorious  national 
Church  of  Erin,  whatever  this  country  may  have 
gained  through  being  thus  brought  within  the 
community  of  European  nations,  was  yet  the  symbol 
of  an  end  which  had  come  to  much  that  was  most 
promising  in  our  earlier  history.  The  bond  of  union 
between  national  and  ecclesiastical  life  disappeared 
with  the  nationality  of  the  Church.  In  literature  it 
widened  the  breach  between  things  sacred  and 
profane.  Popular  literature  fell  wholly  into  the  hands 
of  the  bardic  order,  an  institution  pertaining  to  the 
childhood  of  nations,  and  which  Ireland,  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  its  development,  was  beginning  to 
outgrow.  For  it  was  not  only  Edward  III.  in  his 
Statute  of  Kilkenny  (which,  by  the  way,  like  the 
Anglo-Norman  invasion,  was  supported  by  ecclesias- 
tical authority),  or  Edmund  Spenser,  in  his  **  View 
of  the  State  of  Ireland,'*  who  pronounced  this 
standing  army  of  poets  to  be  the  bane  of  the  country 
in  several  respects;  but  soon  after  the  curtain  rises  on 
the  regular  narrative  of  Irish  history,  we  find  the 
authorities  of  Erin  assembled  to  consider  the  best 
method  of  dealing  with  what  had  become  a  public 
nuisance.  As  Keating  says  : — **  The  poets  were  a 
great  burden  and  it  was  difficult  to  control  them.  For 
the  Chief  Poet's  retinue  numbered  thirty,  and  there 
were  fifteen  in  the  retinue  of  the  poet  who  came  next 
to  him;  and  about  that  time  nearly  a  third  of  the 
men  of  Ireland  belonged  to  the  poetic  order,  and  they 
quartered  themselves  from  Samhain  to  Bealltaine  on 


24  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

the  men  of  Ireland."*  The  Ard-Righ  of  that  time, 
Aodh  Mac  Ainmire,  wished  to  do  away  with  this 
outrageous  institution,  but  at  the  suggestion  of 
Columcille,  whose  political  influence  was  then  great, 
their  numbers  were  reduced,  and  many  of  them  were 
turned  into  schoolmasters.  King  Aodh's  proposal 
was  so  energetic  and  drastic  that  one  would  like  to 
know  more  of  an  Irish  statesman  who  seems  to  have 
been  as  free  from  sentimentalism  as  Edward  I.  And 
as  it  turned  out,  the  settlement  of  Drum-Ketta  was  by 
no  means  the  end  of  the  abuses  of  the  bardic  order. 
Right  down  to  the  Penal  times  we  hear  of  them  chiefly 
as  bullies,  braggarts,  and  scamps,  and  we  may  be 
sure  that  whatever  poetry  the  bardic  class,  as  a  class, 
produced,  was  as  paltry  as  some  of  their  *'  satires," 
etc.,  which  have  come  down  to  us.  Their  very 
notion  of  a  poet  as  the  member  of  a  kind  of  guild,  or 
bardic  order,  precluded  the  emergence  of  a  great 
poetic  individuality  much  in  the  same  sense  and  to  the 
same  extent  as  a  too  rigidly-established  priestly  order 

*The  following  passage  in  Gosson's  School  oj 
Abuse,  written  in  the  spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth 
(1579),  serves  to  show  that  other  nations  have  been 
slow  in  disestablishing  their  bardism  : — **  We  have 
infinite  poets,  and  pipers,  and  suche  peevishe  cattel 
among  us  in  Englande,  that  live  by  merrie  begging, 
mainteyned  by  almes,  and  privily  encroach  upon 
everie  man's  purse.  But  if  they  that  are  in  authoritie, 
and  have  the  sworde  in  their  handes  to  cut  off  abuses, 
shoulde  call  an  accompt  to  see  how  many  Chirons, 
Terpandri,  and  Homers  are  heere,  they  might  cast  the 
summe  without  pen  or  counters  and  sit  downe  with 
Racha,  to  weepe  for  her  children,  because  they  were 
not." 


MONUMENT  OF  IRISH  PROSE  25 

precludes  the  emergence  of  a  new  spiritual  initiative. 
The  true  poet,  as  we  now  see,  is  depressed  and 
silenced  by  the  necessity  to  conform;  and  we  may 
conjecture  that  many  a  poetic  soul  in  Erin  remained 
mute  and  inglorious,  or  what  was  worse,  became  loud 
and  turgid,  through  having  to  accept  the  traditions 
of  the  bardic  caste.  The  bards  seem  always  to  have 
been  afraid  of  being  too  serious.  Any  consideration 
of  the  mysteries  of  existence,  or  any  aim  at  inspiring 
men  with  high  and  consolatory  thoughts,  they  left  to 
the  dull  fellows  who  gave  themselves  up  to  the  recital 
of  psalms  and  prayers.  They  gave  Ireland  for  its 
ideal  the  jolly  fellow,  subsequently  incarnated  in  the 
heroes  of  Lever  and  Lover.  The  only  virtues  which 
they  never  wearied  of  praising,  hospitality  and 
generosity,  were  those  by  whose  superstitious  exercise 
they  were  themselves  enabled  to  maintain  their  useless 
existence.  Sin  e  -An  f^etit  m^V'  ptJ-Ait^  tnife  e,  A^tif  mA 
CA  bi^eus  irif  An  f^etiU  biot)  ! 

The  existence  in  Ireland  of  two  large  communities 
of  men,  one  religious,  the  other  non-religious,  and, 
to  a  certain  extent,  anti-religious,  was  impossible 
without  a  certain  rivalry  and  hostility  arising  between 
them.  The  clerics  learned  more  and  more  to  scorn 
and  hold  aloof  from  the  bards,  whose  idleness  and 
abuse  of  privileges  they  justly  censured,  while  the 
bards  retaliated  by  contrasting  the  glories  of  an  heroic 
age  with  the  times  in  which  they  were  fallen.  It  is 
surprising  to  some  when  they  learn  for  the  first  time 
that  a  section  of  Gaelic  literature  which  seems  most 
ancient  in  its  thought  and  spirit,  those  Ossianic  ballads 
in  which  pagan  life  is  so  forcibly  contrasted  with  the 
ascetic  and  devotional,  should  belong  to  more  recent 


26  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

centuries.  The  hardihood  of  Oisin  in  dialogue  with 
Patrick  surprises  us  to  this  day.  In  these  poems  the 
bards  went  so  far  as  they  dared  with  a  people  whose 
affections  they  held,  while  the  Church  retained  the 
people's  veneration.  Meanwhile,  between  the  bards 
and  the  priests,  **  the  hungry  sheep  looked  up  and 
were  not  fed."  When  the  Reformation  came  it  was 
needed  in  Ireland,  at  least  as  much  as  elsewhere;  less, 
indeed,  on  account  of  any  great  ecclesiastical  abuses, 
than  because  of  the  sad  lethargy  into  which  the  mind 
and  spirit  of  the  nation  were  fallen.  Yet  there  seemed 
no  way  of  reaching  the  national  consciousness;  no 
way,  except  one,  and  that  was  by  translating  the  Bible 
into  the  Irish  language. 

Small  blame  to  the  people  of  Ireland  that  they 
did  not  accept  the  Reformation  as  it  was  offered  to 
them — that  they  refused  to  regard  the  gentleman  or 
lady  on  the  throne  of  England  as  the  Head  of  their 
Church  in  preference  to  the  remote  and  mysterious 
Bishop  of  Rome.  Yet  as  regards  the  welfare  of  the 
language  it  might  have  been  better  if  they  could  have 
consented  to  do  so.  An  early  enthusiast  for  the  Irish 
language  was  Queen  Elizabeth,  who  seems  to  have 
advanced  far  enough  in  the  study  of  it  to  encounter 
difficulties  which  indisposed  her  to  add  to  her  royal 
cares  the  considerable  one  of  mastering  the  tongue. 
It  is  true  this  inclination  of  Queen  Elizabeth  for  the 
Irish  language  was  not  altogether  disinterested. 
Having  been  excommunicated  by  the  Pope,  one  of  the 
first  acts  of  reprisal  which  had  occurred  to  her  was  to 
convert  the  Irish  language  into  an  engine  against  the 
Papacy.  She  made  a  personal  matter  of  it  too,  for  it 
was  her  own  money  which  paid  for  the  fount  of  type 


MONUMENT  OF  IRISH  PROSE  27 

which  was  almost  the  beginning  of  Irish  printed 
literature.  In  1603,  eight  years  before  the  English 
authorised  version,  the  New  Testament  appeared  in 
Irish,  translated  directly,  with  the  aid  of  several 
learned  Irishmen,  from  the  Greek.  There  can  be 
little  question  that  if  self-interests  had  not  interfered, 
the  Bible  in  Irish,  applied  to  the  mind  of  the  Irish 
people  at  a  critical  moment,  might  have  been  a  highly 
important  influence  in  its  political  and  spiritueJ  history, 
and  that  the  Irish  language  might  have  had  the  nucleus 
of  a  serious  modern  literature,  the  lack  of  which  has 
caused  it  to  be  cast  aside  by  successive  generations  of 
Irishmen  as  they  have  emerged  into  the  air  of  the 
modern  world.  The  experiment  was  defeated,  perhaps 
chiefly  by  the  Irish  Government,  who  dreaded  the 
publication  of  a  book  which  they  feared  would  create 
a  soul  in  the  nationality  which  they  sought  to  destroy ; 
and,  secondly,  by  the  Catholic  priesthood,  who  now 
for  the  first  time  began  to  take  an  interest  in 
**  literature  for  the  people,"  and  who  printed  on  the 
Continent  (partly,  as  some  say,  from  Elizabeth's  type, 
which  they  had  got  hold  of)  the  first  of  those  books 
of  pietism  which  have  been  a  questionable  substitute 
for  the  antique  insight  and  compelling  solemnity  of 
the  Bible.  Soon  after,  the  dreadful  incidents  of  the 
Plantations  and  Rebellions  fixed  Protestant  and 
Catholic  in  enmity  toward  one  another,  and  the  cause 
of  Irish  nationality  came  to  be  involved  more  and 
more  hopelessly  in  odium  theologicum.  The  printing 
of  the  Old  Testament  in  1685  was  due  mainly  to  the 
philosopher,  Robert  Boyle;  as  is  well  known,  the 
translation  had  been  begun  under  the  care  of  the  good 
Bishop  Bedell,   and  it,   too,  is  a  more  or  less  direct 


28  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

translation  from  the  original.  But  the  country,  under 
the  direction  of  its  spiritual  guides,  would  now  have 
none  of  it,  and  its  circulation  was  left  to  the  Society 
for  the  Promotion  of  Christiem  Knowledge,  which 
arose  at  the  end  of  the  century.  There  is  something 
perhaps  a  little  pathetic  in  the  naive  assurance  of 
those  monarchs,  philosophers,  and  bishops  who 
interested  themselves  in  the  enterprise,  that  the 
Hebrew  Bible,  translated  into  the  tongue  of  the  Gael, 
would  prove  irresistible.  Perhaps,  after  all,  the  solemn 
note  of  Hebrew  literature  was  out  of  tune  with  the 
Gaelic  temperament.  Perhaps  the  only  language  in 
which  Ireland  could  possibly  have  read  the  Bible  was 
English.  In  any  case,  it  is  hardly  on  its  literary  merits 
or  by  authority  of  its  spiritual  wisdom,  that  a  book 
recommends  itself  to  the  hearts  of  the  people.  Even 
in  Wales,  where  there  was  not  the  same  political  or 
religious  division  between  government  and  nationality 
as  in  this  country,  the  translation  of  the  Bible  had  for 
a  long  time  very  little  effect  in  stopping  the  decay  of 
the  language;  and  the  Bible  of  Bishop  Lloyd  would 
probably  have  had  much  the  same  destiny  as  Bishop 
Bedell's,  had  not  the  institution  of  Sunday  schools  by 
the  Methodists  obliged  little  boys  and  girls,  no  doubt 
very  reluctantly,  to  study  it  and  learn  it  by  heart. 
Few  Irishmen  will  admit  that  Ireland  would  have 
been  made  a  more  interesting  and  agreeable  country 
by  an  evangelical  movement  which  would  have 
introduced  Bedell's  Bible  into  every  cottage;  but  it 
was  probably  at  the  cost  of  her  ancient  language,  as 
well  as  of  some  other  things,  that  Ireland  kept  her 
religious  tradition  unbroken. 

1905. 


THE  GRAND  OLD  TONGUE 

STATELY  and  venerable  personage, 
affectionately  known  among  his  admirers 
as  Ar  dTeanga  Fein,  or  Our  Own 
Tongue,  has  reappeared  in  our  midst  of 
late  years  after  a  long  and  nearly  mortal 
illness,  profiting  by  the  increased  amenity  of  Irish 
public  life.  Few,  indeed,  will  deny  that  a  grace  and 
dignity  are  diffused  by  this  ancient  presence,  whose 
noble  aspect  is  not  belied  by  the  strong  current  of 
deep-sounding  vocables  which  issue  from  his  throat 
in  discourse,  and  few  can  refuse  themselves  the 
pleasure  of  passing  a  word  to  him  when  they  meet 
him,  for  the  sake  of  experiencing  the  inimitable  gusto 
and  heartiness  of  his  response,  which  has,  indeed, 
the  *' very  sound  of  courtesy."  To  us  who  are 
condemned  to  tread  the  pavements  of  a  large  and 
sophisticated  town,  his  presence  wafts  an  agreeable 
pungency  of  peat-smoke,  the  airs  of  boglands  under 
the  moon,  the  mists  and  eternal  cadences  of  the 
Atlantic.  Notwithstanding  the  homely  burr  in  his 
accent,  and  a  certain  suggestion  of  a  lack  of  book- 
learning  and  culture  conveyed  by  his  manner  of 
slurring  his  syllables  and  running  his  words  into  one 
another,  the  general  impression  of  dignity  made  during 
the  slightest  intercourse  with  him  is  such  that  no  one 
dreams  of  raising  concerning  him  the  question, 
whether  he  is  a  gentleman.  And,  indeed,  when  we 
reflect  that  his  ancestry  can  be  traced  as  far  back  as 


30  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

that  of  any  of  his  compeers  of  Europe  and  Asia,  the 
question  would  seem  sufficiently  superfluous.  That 
he  has  seen  better  days  is  certain;  there  was  even  a 
time  when  not  only  this  island  but  its  larger  neighbour, 
together  with  a  large  slice  of  the  Continent,  were  his 
own;  and  if  he  no  longer  hears  around  him  the 
language  of  courtiers,  cultivated  poets,  and  learned 
ecclesiastics,  there  are  not  wanting  those  who  assert 
that  in  human  dignity  he  loses  nothing  by  comparison 
with  that  rival  who  has  supplanted  him,  to  whom  he 
refers  with  majestic  tolerance  as  Beurla.  His  caubeen 
may  have  knocked  itself  out  of  shape  against  the 
lintels  of  humble  doorways,  and  his  coat  may  be  green 
about  his  shoulders,  yet  he  never  wears  a  cringing 
or  shabby-genteel  air. 

There  is,  however,  one  baffling  peculiarity  about 
this  venerable  personage,  inconsistent,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  if  not  with  his  public  notoriety,  at  least  with 
his  reinstatement  in  what  many  of  his  admirers  claim 
for  him  as  his  birthright.  With  all  his  heartiness,  for 
the  sincerity  of  which  the  deep  note  of  his  voice  is  a 
sufficient  guarantee,  he  does  not  permit  that  close 
intimacy  for  which  he  provokes  the  desire;  and 
however  numerous  those  may  be  who  can  boast  a 
bowing  acquaintance  with  him,  it  is  comparatively 
rarely  that  one  meets  with  any  person  who  can  be 
said  by  common  consent  to  know  him  well. 

As  one  of  those  anxious  to  acquire  something  more 
than  the  bowing  acquaintance  of  which  so  many  can 
now  boast  with  the  Teanga,  the  present  writer  has 
listened  to  his  deep-chested  utterance,  endeavouring 
after  him  to  fetch  up  his  g's  from  the  back  of  his 
throat  and  to  smash  his  rs  against  his  palate,  in  the 


THE  GRAND  OLD  TONGUE  31 

hope  that  finally  the  old  man  would  dispense  with 
his  role  of  elocution-master  and  narrate  with  the  zest 
born  of  perfect  intimacy  some  of  those  inimitable 
tales  with  which  his  memory  is  stored,  tales  to  which, 
it  will  be  remembered,  the  great  poet,  Edmund 
Spenser,  listened  not  without  appreciation.  But  the 
barriers  to  the  attainment  of  this  perfect  rapport  seem 
insuperable.  The  Teanga  would  seem  to  have  lost 
the  flexibility  of  youth  and  to  be  the  slave  of  old 
usages,  which,  however  interesting  in  themselves, 
prevent  his  meeting  his  disciples  half-way,  as  a  master 
should  do  who  has  the  secret  of  communicating  his 
spirit.  And,  indeed,  a  knowledge  of  his  history 
disposes  one  to  accept  himi  just  as  he  is,  and  not  to 
expect  from  him  now  a  departure  from  his  conservative 
instincts.  While  his  European  contemporaries  have 
lived  and  grown  to  what  they  are  amid  the  stress  of 
epoch-making  ideas  and  movements,  have  enjoyed 
ceaseless  intercourse  with  one  another,  been  partners 
in  the  same  enterprises,  and  made  common  cause 
against  the  foes  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  liberty, 
he  fell,  at  the  very  dawn  of  what  we  call  the  miodern 
movement,  out  of  any  share  in  the  titanic  struggle  of 
the  new  ideas,  and  living  out  his  life  in  solitude  and 
far  from  towns,  with  all  their  iniquities  and  revolutions, 
indulged  his  dreamy  inclmations,  sharing  the  kindly 
life  of  simple  peasants.  And  now,  while  his  compeer 
of  Germany  is  valued  for  his  philosophical  discourse, 
and  that  of  France  for  his  lucid  critical  insight,  while 
Beurla,  forgetting  the  golden  dreams  of  youth,  is 
concerned  chiefly  with  practical  questions  of  sociology 
and  government  arising  out  of  a  vast  empire — his  talk 
is  of  turf -cutting  on  the  mountain-side,  the  kettle  on 


32  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

the  hob,  the  green  boreen,  or  twilight  try  sting-places. 
Has  not  this  rugged  but  not  ignoble  kinsman  of  the 
Aryan  family  of  languages  still  a  part  to  bear  among 
his  lofty  brethren? 

"The  cloud  of  mortal  destiny. 
Others  will  front  it  fearlessly. 
But  who,  like  him,  will  put  it  by  ?  '* 

The  best  friend  of  the  Teanga  could  not  wish  for  him 
a  more  beneficent  mission  than  that  of  interpreting,  by 
means  of  his  songs  and  tales,  the  life  and  thought  of 
human  beings  living  in  the  bosom  of  elemental  nature. 
His  presence  with  us,  meanwhile,  excites  a  special 
and  pathetic  interest,  inasmuch  as  several  learned 
doctors  have  pronounced  that  he  cannot  live  much 
longer,  and  that  the  energy  which  he  now  displays  is 
only  a  last  exhibition  of  vitality,  ere  he  sinks  into  the 
final  coma  which  precedes  the  easy  death  of  the  old. 
His  admirers,  it  is  true,  vociferously  scout  this  verdict 
and  predict  a  glorious  future  for  the  Teanga,  full  of 
all  the  inspirations  and  ardours  of  youth  and  fortune; 
nay,  they  assert  that  Beurla  will  have  sunk  into 
dishonour  while  a  golden  age  is  still  opening  out  its 
vistas  before  the  rival  whom  he  sought  to  exterminate. 
It  is  very  doubtful,  however,  whether  those  who 
indulge  these  fancies  are  the  best  friends  of  the  old 
gentleman,  whose  infirmities  and  peculiarities  are 
more  suited  to  a  life  of  retirement  and  rusticity.  Those 
intellectually  desperate  men,  who  would  hurry  him 
into  an  impossible  position  as  champion  of  political 
and  religious  parties,  misconceive  entirely  the  true 
nature  of  his  mission,  and,  as  might  be  expected,  such 
persons  are  for  the  most  part  ignorant  of  the  old  man 
personally.     It  is,  at  all  events,  permissible  to  hope 


THE  GRAND  OLD  TONGUE  33 

tKat  under  the  care  of  the  good  friends  whom  he  has 
found  in  his  decHne,  he  may  Hve  on  now  without 
much  losing  ground  for  an  indefinite  number  of  years. 
Heartily  let  us  pray  that  he  may  do  so !  For  his 
presence  sheds  an  old-world  distinction  over  the  whole 
island  which  was  once  his  own,  and  to  every  hill  and 
stream  of  which  he  bestowed  in  the  morning  of  his 
youth  a  name. 

1901. 


THE  IRISH  MYTHOLOGICAL  CYCLE"* 


IF  the  Irish  race  had  succeeded  poHtically, 
the  old  wonder- world  of  myth  and  legend 
might  have  been  lost  from  memory  more 
completely  than  it  has  been.  It  is  quite 
possible — nay,  judging  by  all  analogies 
it  is  almost  certain — that  the  excitement  of  political 
swccess,  and  the  new  forms  of  life  and  energy,  and  it 
may  be  of  belief,  brought  into  existence  by  it,  would 
have  been  more  unfavourable  to  the  preservation  of 
ancient  memories  than  were  the  Danish  invasions  or 
the  Anglo-Norman  conquest.  The  two  nations  of 
modern  Europe  which  have  had  the  most  conspicuous 
destinies,  England  and  France,  are  those  which  have 
most  completely  lost  sight  of  primitive  beliefs  and 
have  no  longer  the  material  from  which  to  recreate 
them.  England  has  to  interrogate  Iceland  as  to  those 
early  divinities  after  whom  it  still  names  the  days  of 
the  week,  and  France  is  somewhat  similarly  indebted 
to  Ireland.  So  far,  then,  as  the  preservation  of  the 
ancient  traditions  of  the  Irish  Celt  are  concerned,  it 
would  perhaps  be  hard  to  decide  whether  the  Danish 
and  Anglo-Norman  invasions  did  more  damage  by 
vsrantonly  destroying  documents  than  service  by 
arresting  the  development  of  the  nation  on  its  own 
lines :     for     whatever     turn     an     independent     Irish 

*  The  Irish  Mythological  Cycle.  By  M.  d'Arbois  de  Jubainville 
Translated  by  Richard  Irvine  Best.  Dublin  :  O'Donoghue  and 
Co.,  1903. 


••  IRISH  MYTHOLOGICAL  CYCLE  "  35 
civilisation  would  have  taken,  we  may  feel  pretty  sure 
that  it  would  have  passed  through  periods  in  which 
primitive  beliefs  would  have  meant  as  little  to  it  as 
did  the  **  Lay  of  Beowulf  "  to  England  in  the  time  of 
Bunyan,  or  the  Breton  romances  to  France  in  the  time 
of  Voltaire.  History  is  the  record  of  those 
transformations  by  which,  in  working  out  its  destiny, 
a  nation  continually  dies  unto  itself.  Nations  have  not 
histories  nor  men  destinies,  if  they  cannot  now  and 
then  sacrifice  precedents  to  principles.  And  in  fact 
Ireland  has  never  been  a  wholly  unprogressive 
country.  For  several  centuries,  indeed,  no  great 
European  movement  has  influenced  ostensibly  the 
character  of  Irish  nationality;  but  there  was  one  such 
movement  in  which  Ireland  shared  to  the  full  as  much 
as  any  European  country,  and  that  was  the  monastic 
movement  of  the  Christian  Church  at  the  close  of 
antiquity  and  the  commencement  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
It  was  Christianity,  so  freely  received  in  ancient  Erin 
at  a  time  when  there  was  no  external  compulsion  upon 
it  to  receive  what  it  did  not  like,  which  divided  Ireland 
for  ever  from  its  childhood. 

What  kind  of  beliefs  were  those  displaced  in  Irelemd 
by  Christianity?  For  goi  answer  to  this  inquiry,  the 
ordinary  Irish  reader,  until  recent  years,  has  had  to 
rely  on  those  unsatisfactory  chapters  with  which  Irish 
historians,  since  the  eleventh  century,  have  introduced 
the  story  of  their  race.  This  spurious  Cel to-Hebraic 
mythology  comes  down  to  us  from  a  time  when 
Ireland  read  the  Bible  with  uncritical  faith,  and  the 
bardic  historiographers  scanned  the  Hebrew  records 
of  the  origin  of  the  human  race,  assuredly  with  more 
excuse  than  our  modern  **  Anglo-Israelites,"  but  with 

D 


36  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

results  far  more  perplexing  to  those  who  would  now 
sift  in  these  accounts  the  genuine  from  the  fictitious. 
It  was  in  the  eleventh  century,  according  to  M. 
d'Arbois  de  Jubainville — the  century  in  which  the 
**  Book  of  Invasions  "  was  compiled — that  a  **  school 
of  mythology  "  arose,  which  set  itself  to  adapt  the 
floating  traditions  of  the  Celt  to  the  unimpeachable 
authority  of  the  Bible.  The  gods  of  the  pagan  Irish, 
who  still  roamed  at  large  in  the  imagination  of  the 
people,  were  called  in  to  give  a  last  account  of  them- 
selves to  that  race,  in  respect  to  which  they  had, 
perhaps,  taken  their  duties  somewhat  lightly,  and 
which  had  now  adopted  the  essentially  iconoclastic 
religion  of  righteousness.  The  Irish  gods  were  more 
fortunate  in  the  destiny  meted  out  to  them  than  were 
their  august  kindred,  the  gods  of  Greece,  when,  in 
the  panic  of  which  Milton  has  sung,  they  vacated 
their  shrines  on  the  advent  of  the  Christian  era. 
Instead  of  transforming  their  former  gods  into  demons, 
the  Irish  mythographers,  following  an  appropriate  text 
in  the  sixth  chapter  of  Genesis,  agreed  to  regard  them 
as  **  the  mighty  men  which  were  of  old,  men  of 
renown."  And  henceforth,  in  the  ancient  history  of 
Ireland,  it  became  hard  to  distinguish  gods  from  men. 
The  Tuatha  De  Danann  and  the  Fomorians  seem  not 
less  to  take  part  in  human  fortunes  than  to  direct  them, 
and  the  squabbles  of  divinities  break  in  on  the  honest 
wars  of  mankind.  To  distinguish  the  mythological 
element  in  these  old  tales,  and  re-fashion  from  them 
something  like  a  system,  was  a  task  which  awaited 
the  modem  science  of  comparative  mythology;  and 
though  it  is  probably  vain  to  expect  anything  more 
certain   than   suggestive   speculation   as   the   result   of 


••  IRISH  MYTHOLOOICAL  CYCLE  '^        37 

such  inquiries,  M.  d'Arbois,  in  the  work  now  trans- 
lated by  Mr.  R.  1.  Best,  no  doubt  indicates  once  for 
all  the  most  likely  ways  of  getting  at  the  truth.  Mr. 
Best,  indeed,  deserves  the  thanks  of  the  Irish  reading 
PtJdHc  for  having  made  generally  accessible  a  work 
which  helps  so  much  toward  setting  our  ancient 
history  on   a   true   foundation. 

The  ordinary  reader  will  caie  less  to  hear  from 
M.  d'Arbois  how  comparative  mythology  **  equates  " 
Tethra  with  Kronos,  or  Ith  with  Prometheus,  than 
to  learn  quite  generally  with  what  views  of  man  and 
nature  the  great  race  of  ancient  Celts  looked  forth  on 
the  spectacle  of  life  and  destiny.  What  vital  per- 
ception of  truth  was  theirs,  or  what  were  their  errors? 
First  of  all,  the  Celts  appear  to  have  been  always  a 
Tace  of  implicit  believers.  There  is  no  trace  of  such 
''philosophic  doubt*'  as  appears  in  the  ancient 
writings  of  the  Hebrews,  the  Greeks,  or  the  Anglo- 
Saxons.  Where,  as  with  the  Hebrews,  the  belief  in 
another  life,  for  example,  arises  as  an  explanation  of 
the  injustices  and  imperfections  of  this,  a  fundamental 
doubt  as  to  the  whole  matter  is  evident,  and  the 
reward  of  the  righteous  becomes  an  object  of  prayer 
and  hope.  That  is  a  philosophic  faith,  or  a  truth 
conceived  by  inference.  But  what  distinguished  the 
Celt  was  the  vision — for  it  was  nothing  less — of 
another  world  interpenetrating  this,  seen  at  times 
with  the  bodily  eyes  and  even  journeyed  unto  with 
the  bodily  feet.  It  might  be  said  that  such  articles  of 
belief  as  the  repayment  of  debts  cifter  death,  or  that 
the  dead  warrior  will  use  the  weapons  buried  with 
him,  are  but  the  crudities  of  savage  minds;  but  this 
belief   in    the    present   reality   of   another   world   has 


38  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

remained  with  the  Celts  up  to  times  when  no  one 
can  say  they  were  savages.  Christianity  did  not  come 
in  Ireland  as  an  answer  to  men's  doubts  about  the 
soul  or  about  immortality.  *'  I  would  treat  them  as 
fools,"  says  Valerius  Maximus,  in  a  passage  quoted 
by  M.  d'Arbois,  **  if  these  wearers  of  breeches  did 
not  hold  the  same  beliefs  in  the  immortality  of  the 
soul  as  Pythagoras  professed  in  his  philosopher's 
mantle."  And  with  various  other  writers  of  the 
Romsoi  world  Celtic  beliefs  are  alluded  to  with  more 
respect  than  are  those  of  the  Jews.  Christianity  in 
Ireland  would  hardly  have  found  itself,  in  the  7th  and 
8th  centuries,  endowed  with  a  missionary  vocation, 
had  the  Celt  not  been  originally  prepared  by  tempera- 
ment and  habit  of  mind  to  accept  it.  Yet  it  was  not 
as  a  rule  of  life,  such  as  Christianity  appears  to  us 
now  pre-eminently  to  be,  that  it  was  so  completely 
accepted  in  Ireland,  but  as  an  authentic  account  of 
that  other  world,  in  which  the  Celt  never  doubted. 
A  religion,  in  the  sense  of  an  explanation  of  life, 
the  Celts  did  not  require,  for  they  had  that  explanation 
already  in  a  belief  which  was  implicit  with  them.  As 
another  writer  on  Celtic  subjects,  M.  Le  Brauz,  says, 
**  The  future  life,  regarded  as  a  sanction  of  the  present 
life,  was  not,  in  truth,  a  Celtic  conception." 

It  is  reasonable  to  look  for  some  kinship  between 
the  primitive  beliefs  of  a  people  and  the  characteristics 
revealed  in  its  literature  and  history  when  it  has 
become  one  of  those  ministers  of  destiny  called  nations. 
Perhaps  M.  d'Arbois  is  not  too  fanciful  when  he 
Rnds  in  that  pantheistic  poem  of  Amairgen — assuredly 
Dne  of  the  most  venerable  remains  of  Celtic  cmtiquity 
— preserved  in  thp  Book  of  Leinster,  the  germ  of  the 


*•  IRISH  MYTHOLOGICAL  CYCLE  '^        39 

philosophy  of  Scotus  Erigena.  In  the  same  way  some 
have  seen  the  germ  of  the  dark  self-questionings  of 
Hamlet  in  the  speech  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  chief  quoted 
by  Bede.  When  Paulinus  brought  Christianity  to 
Northumberland  and  King  Edwin  consulted  his  wise 
men,  one  of  them  said  :  *'  O  king,  the  life  of  man 
while  on  earth,  compared  to  that  which  is  unknown 
to  us,  seems  to  me  as  when  a  sparrow  flies  swiftly 
through  the  hall  where  thou  art  sitting  with  thy  thanes 
in  the  winter  time,  with  the  warm  fire  lighted  on 
the  hearth,  but  the  icy  rain-storm  without.  The 
sparrow  entering  at  one  door  flies  quickly  out  at  the 
other;  while  it  is  within  it  is  untouched  by  the  storm, 
but  after  a  little  space  of  calm  it  flies  away,  and 
passing  out  of  the  storm  into  the  storm  again,  is  lost 
to  thy  sight.  So  the  life  of  man  is  seen  for  a  little 
while,  but  what  follows  it,  or  what  went  before,  we 
know  not.  Therefore,  if  this  new  teaching  shall  bring 
us  anything  more  certain,  it  seems  to  deserve  to  be 
followed.*'  Nothing  could  better  make  us  feel,  by 
force  of  contrast,  one  distinguishing  peculiarity  of  the 
Celtic  mind,  the  absence  from  it  of  the  questioning 
spirit.  When  Scotus  Erigena  himself  became  a 
reasoning  philosopher  he  passed  out  of  the  ken  of 
the  Celtic  world.  To  this  day  it  remains  the  charac- 
teristic of  those  writers  whom  we  call  distinctively 
Celtic,  that  they  live  by  their  imagination  rather  than 
by  their  intellect.  A^nd  who  shall  say  where  vision 
ends  and  where  credulity  begins?  Perhaps  the  Celt 
is  right  in  regarding  doubt  as  an  intellectual  limit 
beyond  which  he  dares  not,  or  does  not  care  to,  tread. 
It  must  be  said,  however,  that  the  habit  of  subordi- 
natinsr  intellect  to  imagination  has  brought  the  Celt 


40  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

neither  blessedness  nor  greatness.  His  visionary  dis- 
position is  partial  to  that  conservatism  which  has  so 
greatly  helped  his  enemies.  So  long  as  the  other 
world  lies  within  call  and  prospect,  there  will  never 
be  any  active  instinct  to  redress  the  wrongs  of  this. 
Had  the  Celt  ever  permitted  himself  to  doubt,  had  he 
called  in  the  aid  of  reason,  his  history  would  have 
been  different.  It  is  when  the  wild  suspicion  crosses 
the  brain  of  the  citizen  that  after  all  the  religions 
have  been  deceiving  him  with  their  promises,  and  are 
in  a  conspiracy  with  the  whole  mundane  order  to 
repress  him,  that  the  mob  turns  to  a  tiger,  and  the 
peasant  looks  across  the  field  to  the  chateau,  asking 
himself  why  horses  should  fare  better  than  he. 
Happily  in  Ireland — where  signs  of  change  are  not 
wanting — there  is  as  little  prospect  of  revolutionary 
horrors  as  anywhere,  though  what  have  hitherto  been 
accounted  the  permanent  characteristics  of  the  Celt 
may  become  hard  to  recognise  in  new  trans- 
formations. 

1903. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  CELTIC 
MOVEMENT* 

^OW  many  men  carry  into  middle  age,  or 
even  very  far  into  early  manhood,  a 
concern  for  literature  ?  It  is  unfortunately 
true  that,  while  almost  every  man  con- 
tinues throughout  life  to  require  at  odd 
moments,  or  perhaps  at  regular  intervals,  **  some- 
thing to  read,"  an  interest  in  literature,  properly 
so-called,  is  confined  among  those  who  have  never 
wholly  abandoned  the  dream  of  doing  something  in 
it  themselves.  An  avowal,  not  necessarily  quite 
sincere  or  without  sarcastic  reference,  of  being  '*  com- 
monplace,'* is  very  often  the  curt  apology  which  a 
man  makes  nowadays  for  not  being  what  is  called 
**  literary."  **  I  am  a  plain  man,"  he  says — ^which  is 
only  a  somewhat  deceitful  way  of  claiming  that  he  has 
the  mass  of  mankind  with  him,  and  that  literature 
if  it  is  good  for  anything  should  not  cease  to  interest 
the  mass  of  mankind.  And  in  this  he  is,  no  doubt, 
right :  only  the  fault  is  not  so  entirely  as  he  conceives 
the  incompetence  of  the  poets.  It  is  for  history  and 
progress,  doubtless,  to  bring  about  moments  in  which 
the  generality  of  men  shall  hearken  to  the  dreams  of 
poets,  and  in  which  the  poets  shall  hear  through  the 
din  of  actual  life  the  music  of  humanity.     Between 

*  Idms  of  Good  and  Evil,      By  W.  B.  Yeata.      London  :    A.  H. 
Bullen,  1903. 


42  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

such  moments  there  is  perhaps  nothing  for  it  but  that 
the  poet  shall  dream  his  dreeon  and  the  ordinary  man 
thresh  out  the  concrete  problems  of  civic  life,  with  all 
the  ingenuity,  integrity,  and  good  sense  he  can  apply 
to  them. 

Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats,  whose  career  is  cast  in  a  period 
in  which  there  is  no  such  rapprochement  of  poetry 
and  life,  but  rather — in  spite  of  the  protest  of  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling — an  increasing  divergence  since  the 
days  of  Tennyson  and  Whitman,  has  just  published 
a  book  of  essays  in  which,  considering  the  influence 
of  its  distinguished  author,  it  is  perhaps  permissible 
to  look  for  an  authoritative  statement  of  the  philosophy 
of  the  **  Celtic  movement.'*  The  breach  between 
poetry  and  modern  life  he  holds  to  be  absolute  and 
permanent.  There  are  some  anomalies  in  the  book, 
such,  for  example,  as  appreciative  references  to  Walt 
Whitman,  yet  the  general  argument  is  clear  and  con- 
sistent. The  reign  of  tradition,  which  had  been  dis- 
turbed by  the  Renaissance,  was  overthrown  by  the 
French  Revolution,  which  was  the  inauguration  of 
the  reign  of  reason.  Now  the  awakening  of  reason 
(this  is  Blake's  and  Mr.  Yeats'  dogma)  brings  with 
it  the  obscuring  of  imagination,  and  the  arts,  being 
the  products  of  imagination  wrought  upon  by  the 
"  memory  of  mankind,"  cannot  live  under  the  reign 
of  reason,  but  only  where  the  reason  sleeps  :  for  all 
art  is  an  emanation  from  the  *'  memory  of  mankind," 
the  **  dwelling-house  of  symbols,"  which  moves  men 
through  the  imagination.  Let  the  arts,  then,  proposes 
Mr.  Yeats,  take  refuge  where  tradition  has  never  been 
disturbed,  among  peasants  2md  primitive  people,  who 
live  close  to  the   "great  memory,"   amid   traditions 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  CELTIC  MOVEMENT    43 

which  *'  carry  them  back  thousands  of  years.'*  Leave 
to  the  **  middle  class  "  its  Longfellow  and  its  Mrs. 
Hemans,  its  history,  science,  politics,  philosophy,  and 
lodge  among  kindly  and  credulous  country  folk,  who 
see  fairies  and  have  not  lost  the  use  of  charms  and 
simples,  and  in  whose  folklore  we  see  the  lineaments 
of  an  eternal  and  ancestral  art.  Such  in  its  naked  pre- 
sentment is  Mr.  Yeats'  theory,  in  which  one  can  see 
certain  similarities  to  that  of  Wordsworth  and  of 
Tolstoi,  the  distinctive  part  here  being  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  ordinary  man,  so  to  say,  to  his  fate,  and 
the  contemptuous  repudiation  of  all  humanitarian 
ideals. 

Mr.  Yeats  has  perhaps  done  as  much  as  anyone 
at  the  present  time  to  bring  home  to  us  the  significance 
of  folklore  and  primitive  literature,  before,  it  may  be, 
they  pass  away  for  ever;  and  in  this  respect  he  may 
claim  for  his  work  in  literature  the  commendation  of 
Mencius,  who  said,  **  To  gain  the  peasantry  is  the 
way  to  become  the  son  of  heaven."  The  peasant  with 
his  folklore  represents  the  unreclaimed  part  of  our 
nature,  which  we  call  the  superstitious,  and  which 
though  unreclaimed  is  not  the  less  real.  People  ask 
us  do  we  believe  in  ghosts,  a  question  to  which  only 
that  submerged  and  subconscious  part  of  us,  which 
stirs  in  us  as  it  will,  can  make  answer.  So  it  is  with 
the  belief  in  fairies,  the  shrunken  gods  of  ancient 
Ireland,  which  still  lingers  amongst  the  Irish  peasantry 
— a  vaporous  and  elusive  belief,  withdrawing  from 
the  interrogation  of  the  most  friendly  into  denial  or 
deprecation  of  itself.  These  peasants  are  partly  sub- 
merged in  a  world  of  which  we  know  little,  nay,  they 
know  little  of  it  themselves.     The  ostensible  part  of 


44  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

their  nature,  the  man  who  speaks  to  you  at  his  door 
or  on  the  road,  does  not  believe  in  fairies,  but  the 
submerged  and  subconscious  part  of  him  does,  so 
that  he  is,  perhaps,  sufficiently  sincere  in  the  denial 
of  his  faith  for  the  cock  to  forbear  to  crow.  Still  we 
must  not  close  our  eyes  to  that  defect  of  the  savage 
mind,  or  the  peasant  mind  when  entirely  unawakened 
by  thought — the  lack  of  perspective — which  makes  his 
folklore  worthless  to  thought  either  as  art  or  as  testi- 
incvriy.  The  supernatural  effects  in  his  tales  are  a 
confusion  of  planes.  He  views  the  landscape  and 
the  world  of  his  imagination  as  it  were  on  a  flat 
surface.  The  stars  are  hung  up  in  the  trees.  He 
cEinnot  distinguish  between  the  world  of  phenomena 
and  the  world  of  **  bodiless  essences "  to  which 
thought  admits  us. 

A  race  loses  sight  of  primitive  beliefs  much  as  the 
growing  child  discards  its  playthings  and  its  dolls. 
How  exactly  he  grew  out  of  them  or  what  became  of 
them,  the  grown  person  cannot  well  rememiber;  yet 
that  he  did  so  somehow  is  no  less  certain  than  that 
he  can  still  recall  and  to  some  extent  regret  the  power 
once  his  to  animate  bodies  stuffed  with  bran  or  tin 
soldiers.  Every  tribe  and  every  nation  emerging  out 
of  dim  antiquity  has  lost  or  destroyed  its  dolls,  and 
with  them  a  whole  world  of  beliefs  and  legends,  the 
recollection  of  which  continues  for  a  long  time  to 
afford  a  livelier  impulse  to  the  poet  than  the  business 
and  politics  of  a  mature  civilisation.  The  wars  of  a 
nation  when  it  was  an  obscure  tribe  were,  perhaps, 
comparatively  speaking,  toy  battles;  yet  though 
modern  warfare  may  afford  wider  scope  for  real 
heroism,  self -sacrifice  and  skill,  the  poetic  imagination 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  CELTIC  MOVEMENT  45 
cannot  invest  its  naked  reality  with  the  old  atmosphere 
of  romance.  In  religious  matters  also  the  childhood 
of  nations  and  individuals  believes  in  powers  and 
presences,  in  giants,  fairies  and  hob-goblins,  and  not 
in  a  law  governing  life  and  conduct;  and  the  poet, 
who  represents  in  a  nation  far  on  into  its  full  maturity, 
its  early  beliefs  and  make-believe  reality,  shuns  in 
these  days  the  paths  of  actuality,  and  seeks  the  twi- 
light haunts  of  memory  and  shadows.  And  thus 
poetry,  though  treated  with  indulgence  and  considera- 
tion, falls  in  our  own  time  into  some  contempt :  the 
poet  insisting  that  these  memories  and  shadows  »»*-» 
the  only  real,  or  at  least  the  most  real  things,  and  the 
ordinary  man,  when  the  poet  is  out  of  earshot,, 
allowing  his  opinion  on  the  matter  to  explode  in  noisy 
and  good-humoured  merriment.  The  appearance  of 
a  poet  wholly  on  the  side  of  the  ordinary  man — Mr. 
Yeats'  contemporary,  Mr.  Kipling — is  notable  at  this 
juncture.  Yet  there  are  realities  hidden  away  in  the 
life  of  each  man;  and  unless  the  poet  can  resolutely 
fix  on  these,  affirming  to  those  who  prefer  the  excite- 
ments of  the  market-place  to  the  dreams  of  the  study » 
a  reality  deeper  than  either,  he  must  seem  to  the 
practical  man  much  as  a  child  floating  bulrushes  on 
the  duck-pond  to  the  mariner  whose  "  beard  in  many 
a  tempest  hath  been  shook." 

Is  it  true,  as  Mr.  Yeats  says  it  is,  that  city  life, 
commerce,  and  **  middle  class  "  vulgarity  kill  out  the 
visionary  faculty,  which  men  once  had  on  the  moun- 
tain-side and  the  plain,  or  in  the  infant  towns?  On 
the  contrary,  everything  seems  to  show  that  it  is  in 
culminating  stages  of  civilisation  that  magical  and 
visionary  practices,   such   as   those  described   in   this 


46  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

book,  come  uppermost.  The  poet  returns  to  nature, 
but  the  natural  element  of  one  possessed  of  abnormal 
powers  seems  to  be  the  welter  of  an  abnormal  civili- 
sation. Among  the  stalwart  farmers  who  made  Rome 
or  the  burgesses  of  early  London,  whom  William 
Morris  loved  to  imagine  on  the  wharves  of  an  uncon- 
taminated  Thames,  we  hear  little  of  seances, 
hypnotism  and  the  like;  it  is  in  imperial  Rome,  in 
Nineveh  and  Babylon,  in  modern  London  and  Paris, 
in  the  vast  urbaoi  populations  of  India  and  China, 
that  we  hear  of  such  things,  and  if  our  towns  increase 
so  as  to  suck  up  all  that  remains  of  peasant  life  it 
may  be  expected  that  this  product  of  city  life  may 
increase  proportionately.  Indeed,  one  might  say  that 
it  is  among  the  esprits  homes  of  the  **  middle  class  " 
that  it  has  its  chief  vogue.  Tertullian  acknowledges 
that  the  growth  of  Christianity  was  greatly  furthered 
by  the  general  interest  taken  in  the  spiritualistic 
phenomena  with  which  it  was  at  first  associated.  In 
England,  the  religion  of  the  masses  throughout  the 
large  towns  is  more  and  more  infected  with  these 
practices;  so  wide  of  the  mark  is  it  to  condemn  city 
life  and  the  **  middle  class  "  on  these  grounds.  But, 
indeed,  in  the  tone  adopted  by  Mr.  Yeats  towards  the 
**  middle  class,*'  which  is  simply  the  mass  of  man- 
kind, we  can  gain  some  idea  of  how  dangerous  it 
would  be  for  mankind  that  any  section  of  it  should 
achieve  transcendental  power  or  knowledge,  and  how 
wise  are  those  Powers  who  so  obstinately  withhold 
their  secrets  from  men  until  they  have  graduated  in 
faith,  hope  and  charity.  1903. 


THE  BEST  IRISH  POEM 

**  As  certain  also  of  your  own  poets  have  saidV 

\T  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
a  name  rose  into  prominence  in  England 
which  was  a  baleful  star  to  poetry,  a 
name  at  which  Eros  paused  in  his 
ranging  and  grew  pale,  recognising  a 
threatened  end  to  that  great  period  of  his  apotheosis 
during  which  he  had  become  the  inseparable  com- 
panion of  the  nine  muses  and  been  held  equally  in 
honour  with  them — the  name  of  Malthus.  The  modern 
study  of  literature  has  taught  us  to  see  every  literary 
movement  in  relation  to  the  philosophical  theories 
£Uid  social  changes  of  the  time,  and  we  might  almost 
say  that  the  first  formulation  of  the  Malthusian  theory 
— or  the  theory  that  population  tends  to  increase 
at  a  rate  in  excess  of  the  means  of  subsistence — was 
the  signal  for  poetry  to  betake  itself  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  nature  and  of  the  individual  life,  and  no 
longer  to  be  the  mouthpiece  of  those  warlike  and 
reproductive  instincts  which  make  for  mighty  nations. 
For  the  poet  is  of  all  men  most  susceptible  to  any 
changes  in  the  intellectual  climate  of  his  age,  and  the 
slightest  cloud  in  the  metaphysical  or  speculative  sky 
often  causes  a  fatal  rift  in  his  lute.  The  poets  were  at 
once  up  in  arms  against  Malthus  :  Shelley,  Coleridge, 
Sou  they,  Byron,  all  protested  against  this  cruel  demon- 
stration by  a  Church  of  England  clergyman  of  the 


48  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

blindness  of  Cupid.  **  I  had  rather  be  damned  with 
Plato,"  said  Shelley,  **  than  go  to  heaven  with 
Malthus!"  *' This  abominable  tenet,"  exclaimed 
Coleridge,  *'  disgraceful  to  man  as  a  Christian,  a 
philosopher,  a  statesman,  or  a  citizen  !"  But  that  the 
arguments  of  Mai  thus  had  struck  home,  at  least  so  far 
as  the  poets  were  concerned,  is  clear  from  their  subse- 
quent fortunes.  Already  had  come  the  epoch-making 
defection  of  Wordsworth  and  the  almost  complete 
change  in  the  venue  of  poetry  brought  about  by  his 
withdrawal  from  civic  life  to  his  native  mountains; 
and  in  the  next  generation  we  find  the  poets  either 
faithful  to  the  magnificent  prospectus  of  the  new  poetry 
which  he  prefixed  to  The  Excursion  or  else  battling 
pathetically  with  theological  and  sociological  spectres, 
and  endeavouring  to  lay  the  hateful  ghost  of  doubt. 
It  is  only  historic  visionaries  like  William  Morris  or 
l>elated  jongleurs  like  Swinburne,  who  adhere  obsti- 
nately to  the  old  themes,  as  though  the  sun  of  a  new 
era  were  not  already  well  up  in  the  sky.  Generally 
speaking,  in  spite  of  the  reassurances  of  such  writers 
as  Henry  George,  the  poets  have  never  quite  got  over 
the  depression  caused  by  the  '*  theory  "  of  Mai  thus, 
and  it  would  seem  as  though  the  reproduction  of  one 
generation  by  another  were  a  process  which  must  now 
go  forward  unattended  by  the  gratulatory  chorus  of 
the  poets  :  indeed  it  is  hardly  among  those  naturally 
selected  for  the  continuation  of  the  species  that  they 
find  now-a-days  either  their  chief  audience  or 
inspiration.  One  and  all,  the  poets  turn  with  an 
increasing  aversion  from  the  noisy  and  unlovely  centres 
of  population  to  the  calm  and  solitude  of  nature; 
obeying  an  instinct  perhaps  not  essentially  different 


THE  BEST  IRISH  POEM  49 

from  that  which  drove  the  Christian  ancestors  of  the 
modern  world  into  the  wilderness. 

The  **  population  question  '*  meant  a  different  thing 
to  that  poet  of  County  Clare  who  in  1780  wrote  what 
has  been  called  *'  the  most  tasteful  composition  in 
modern  Irish,"  The  Midnight  Court  (  Cuirt  an 
Mheadhoin  Oidhche).  The  Munster  poets  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  whose  idealism  there  is  none  of 
the  pessimistic  alienation  from  the  joy  of  life  of  the 
later  English  poets,  produced  a  literature  which  has 
not  yet  found  its  critical  interpreter;  an  office  which, 
we  may  wonder,  is  not  taken  over  by  someone  like 
Mr.  Stephen  Gwynn  or  Mr.  T.  W.  RoUeston,  whose 
knowledge  of  Gaelic  enables  them  to  enjoy  in  the 
original  poetry  for  which  such  high  claims  are  made 
as  that  of  Owen  Roe  O'SuUivan,  Egan  O'Rahilly,  etc. 
We  need  not  wonder  that  the  penal  times  produced 
poets  whose  main  themes  were  wine,  women  and 
joviality,  any  more  than  we  need  wonder  that  Cal- 
vinistic  Scotland  produced  Burns.  Perhaps,  indeed, 
the  dear  Irishman  is  never  so  unconvincing  as  when 
he  talks,  as  he  is  so  fond  of  doing,  of  the  horrible  events 
of  the  penal  times,  as  if  they  were  entirely  undeserved, 
or  as  if,  from  his  own  point  of  view,  they  did  not  prove 
a  blessing  in  disguise.  But  for  the  penal  regulations, 
Ireland  would  doubtless  have  been,  at  the  time  of 
O'Connell,  as  much  an  English-speaking  country  as 
Scotland.  The  modern  Gaelic  movement  is  in  direct 
descent  from  the  battle  of  the  Boyne,  which  threw  the 
Celtic  world  back  on  itself,  and  arrested  that  disin- 
tegration of  the  old  language  which  was  already  far 
advanced.  The  penal  regulations  were  a  very  mild 
form  of  that  discipline  to  which  every  race  which  has 


50  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

ever  done  anything  in  the  world  has  been  at  some  time 
subjected,  and  the  lack  of  which  till  then  in  Ireland  is 
probably  the  cause  of  its  having  missed  hitherto  both 
that  political  and  literary  destiny  for  which  the  Irish- 
man, both  physically  and  mentally,  is  so  well  fitted. 
As  it  was,  that  period  proved,  so  far  as  matters  could  at 
so  late  a  date  be  mended,  his  salvation.  With  nothing 
to  do  but  to  keep  quiet,  Gaelic  Ireland  at  length 
achieved  in  its  own  despite  something  like  unity.  The 
population  steadily  increased,  and  whereas  at  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  there  were  only 
about  half  a  million  Gaelic  speakers  in  Ireland,  by  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century  a  big  nation  had  come 
into  existence,  which  has  been  the  main  problem  of 
the  British  Empire  ever  since.  As  regards  literature, 
this  period  was,  by  all  accounts,  the  golden  age  of 
Irish  poetry.  Not  only  did  many  of  the  mediaeval  tales 
and  poems  then  receive  their  final  shape,  but  a  sudden 
expansion  of  form  and  metre  brought  into  the  poems 
of  the  Celts  the  passion  and  genius  of  their  melodies. 
During  the  **  Augustan  age "  of  English  literature 
poems  were  written  in  Ireland  which  have  far  more 
in  common  with  later  developments  of  English  poetry 
— with  poems,  for  example,  like  Shelley's  When  the 
Lamp  is  Shattered  or  George  Meredith's  Love  in  the 
Valley — than  anything  produced  by  the  '*  wits  "  of 
the  London  coffee-houses.  These  poets,  however, 
were  only  strong  in  the  expression  of  the  primordial 
instincts.  When  he  "  begins  to  think,"  the  Celtic 
poet  is  not  so  much,  as  Goethe  said  of  Byron,  *'  a 
child,"  as  a  nasty  bigot.  The  stock-in-trade  images 
of  unregenerate  Irish  nationalism  are  all  of  his 
creation  :  Kathleen  Ni  Houlihan,  the  Soggarth  Aroon» 


THE  BEST  IRISH  POEM  51 

the  Saxon  tyrant,  the  jolly  good  fellow.  Ironical, 
sensual,  gregarious,  and  too  clever  by  half,  the  Irish 
poet  enables  one  to  understand  how  tough  a  problem 
was  presented  in  the  Irish  temperament  to  evangelists 
like  Ignatius  Loyola  and  Wesley,  who  both  entertained 
the  vain  ambition  of  repeating  in  Ireland  the  legendary 
success  of  Patrick. 

Yet  that  there  is  no  natural  limitation  in  the  Irish 
mind  which  disqualifies  it  for  **  dealing  boldly  with 
substantial  things,"  or  for  free  speculation,  is 
sufficiently  proved  in  the  poem  already  mentioned, 
The  Midnight  Court  of  Brian  Merriman,  now 
published  and  translated  in  the  Zeitschrijt  jiir 
Celtische  Philologie  by  L.  C.  Stern.  The  steady 
increase  in  the  population  had  already  begun  to  over- 
flow in  that  stream  of  emigration  to  America  and  to 
the  large  towns  in  Ireland  and  Great  Britain,  which, 
with  another  cause  mentioned  in  the  poem,  deprived 
the  country  of  its  best  and  most  enterprising  young 
men.  What  remedy  for  this  evil?  is  the  question 
discussed  by  Merriman.  The  form  is  the  mediaeval 
Aisling,  or  vision.  The  poem  opens  with  a  fine 
description  of  daybreak  on  a  summer  morning  in  the 
county  Clare. 

'  My  heart  rejoiced  as  I  looked  on  Loch  Greine, 
The  fields,  the  soil,  and  the  width  of  the  skies, 
The  mountains  lying  serene  and  lovely. 
One  over  the  other  uplifting  their  tops. 
Dried  up  though  it  be,  the  heart  rejoices. 
Spent  and  nerveless  and  filled  with  pains; 
The  embittered  hungerer,  owning  nothing, 
Looks  forth  for  a  little  while  over  the  woods  /" 
£ 


52  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

Wandering  on  until  exhausted  the  poet  lies  down 
and  falls  asleep.  A  woman  of  giant  form  appears  to 
him  in  a  dream  and  upbraids  him  with  his  sloth. 
Does  he  not  see  how  the  people  are  hurrying  to  the 
Court,  no  court  of  robbers  who  have  **  sworn  on  the 
Bible  the  destruction  of  the  poor,"  but  a  court  of  the 
queen  and  high  dignitaries  of  the  fairies  who  befriend 
Munster,  and  who  are  met  to  hear  the  complaints  of 
**  the  poor,  the  good,  and  of  women.'*  There  is  a 
want  of  men  in  Erin.  The  high  spirit  of  the  old  race 
has  gone  over  the  seas,  and  the  young  men  are  doing 
nothing  to  replace  it.  Without  further  parley  the 
poet,  as  helpless  as  Chaucer  in  the  claws  of  the  eagle 
in  the  House  oj  Fame,  is  seized  and  borne  over  the 
valleys  to  the  court  at  Feakle. 

He  there  finds  a  company  assembled  in  a  stately 
room  lighted  with  torches  (it  is  midnight  in  his  dream), 
and  standing  at  a  table^  with  tear-stained  face  and 
excited  gesture,  a  maiden  is  laying  before  Aoibhell, 
the  Queen,  the  sad  case  of  the  women  of  Erin,  who 
through  neither  choice  nor  fault  of  their  own  have  to 
live  **  like  black  nuns."  It  is  only  the  old,  not  young 
and  proper  men,  who  will  marry.  She  enumerates 
her  own  charms,  and  describes  without  reserve  her 
frustrated  efforts  to  secure  a  mate,  urging  that  some 
compulsion  be  brought  to  bear  on  the  young  men.  In 
answer  to  this  an  old  man  rises  and  pours  forth  vindic- 
tive abuse  of  the  women  of  Erin,  which  he  illustrates 
by  an  account  of  his  own  mesalliance.  The  young 
men  of  Erin,  he  contends,  only  show  their  prudence 
in  refusing  to  marry;  and  he  makes  a  grumbling 
allusion  to  the  high  fee  (three  guineas  and  a  crown,  as 
the  German  editor  reminds  us)  which  the  poor  maK> 


THE  BEST  IRISH  POEM  53 

had  then  to  pay  the  Church  for  the  privilege.  But  if 
it  be  true,  as  he  admits,  that  the  '*  race  of  men  is 
degenerating  on  the  soil  of  green  and  delightful  Erin," 
there  is  an  **  easy  way  of  peopling  it  once  again  with 
heroes,"  without  the  *'  useless  and  meaningless  "  help 
of  the  priest.  Abolish  marriage.  Let  noble  blood 
combine  with  peasant  vigour  to  produce  a  worthier 
race.  Proclaim  through  the  land  freedom  to  young 
and  old.  Such  a  law  will  breed  again  wit  and  sinew 
in  the  Gael,  and  the  men  of  the  land  will  have  '*  chest, 
back,  and  fists  like  Goll." 

The  reply  of  the  first  speaker  to  this  is  serious  and 
crushing  : 
"  God  willed  that  the  mother  should  not  be  jorsak^n. 

In  women  s  behooj  have  the  prophets  ruled!*' 
She  defends  the  delinquent  in  the  old  man's  case  in 
language  which  drops  out  of  the  decorous  pages  of  the 
German  review,  but  is  led  on  by  his  proposal  to 
contrast  such  dotards  as  he  with  the  fine  young  men 
who  are  lost  to  the  country  in  the  Church.  *'  My 
heart  is  filled  with  grief,  and  in  perplexity  I  wonder 
at  one  thing,  what  has  exempted  the  clergy  from  the 
bond  of  marriage?  For  languishing  maidens  it  is  a 
sad  sight,  their  muscular  build  and  comeliness,  jovial 
countenance,  and  sparkling  smile.  .  .  .  They  live  in 
luxury  at  table,  with  comfort  and  money  for  drink  and 
pleasure;  they  have  beds  of  down  and  nourishing 
meats,  with  cakes  and  comfits  and  wine  and  jesting; 
they  are  trusty  and  able  and  young  and  sociable,  and 
as  we  all  know,  made  of  flesh  and  blood  like  our- 
selves !" 

**  I  say  nothing,"  she  goes  on,   "of  the  awkward 
chatterbox,     the    gouty    grumbler,    the    disconsolate 


54  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

booby,  no,  my  business  is  with  the  simple  and  stout 
fellows  who  snore  and  do  no  work.  I  think  certainly 
that  many  might  still  take  orders,  and  I  allow  them  ! 
We  must  not,  in  justice,  hang  the  whole  company, 
condemning  all  to  the  rope,  nor  would  I  sink  the  ship 
for  the  sake  of  one  man.  Many  of  them,  indeed,  are 
no  good,  and  many  are  unregulated  and  not  to  be 
trusted,  niggardly,  unsympathetic,  without  virtue, 
rough  and  cold,  hateful  to  women  !  But  the  most  of 
them  are  better,  filled  with  love  and  of  a  noble  nature. 
By  their  help  we  often  attain  a  thing  of  value,  a  jewel, 
a  cask,  or  grain.  Their  virtues  are  extolled,  I  know 
it,  and  many  a  clever  and  proper  deed  of  theirs. 
Often,  too,  in  the  country  have  I  heard  a  whisper 
running  round  that  the  gentlemen  have  their  love- 
affairs." 

**  A  sorrow  on  the  land  it  is,  and  a  wrong  to  women, 
this  senseless  obligation  of  the  clergy.  A  bitter  grief 
it  is  for  Ireland,  wTiat  we  have  lost  by  this  aimless  law. 
Wise  Queen !  I  lay  before  you  my  complaint — the 
law  which  binds  the  priests !  My  little  confidence  is 
shaken,  I  am  as  one  who  sees  not — enlighten  me,  and 
tell  me,  for  you  know  it,  the  speech  of  the  prophet, 
the  royal  apostle's  living  word  !  Where  is  the  rule 
ordained  by  the  Creator,  of  the  killing  of  the  flesh  in 
the  priestly  tonsure?  Saint  Paul  said  not,  as  I  think, 
to  shun  marriage,  but  rather  lust;  to  leave  your 
kindred,  however  high  you  be,  and  life-long  to  cleave 
to  the  wife.  But  it  were  a  vain  thing  for  one  such  as 
I  to  expound  to  you  the  sense  of  the  law." 

Finally,  the  queen  pronounces  judgment.  She 
finds  a  true  bill  against  the  men  of  Erin,  and  hence- 
forth whoever  of  them  is  twenty-one  and  unmarried 


THE  BEST  IRISH  POEM  55 

is  to  be  handed  over  to  be  whipped.  As  regards  the 
remedy  proposed  by  the  plaintiff,  she  says:  **  Speak 
it  softly  and  tell  it  not  above  a  whisper,  your  hand 
over  your  mouth,  for  talk  is  risky  :  just  at  present  you 
need  not  disturb  those  charming  gentlemen — it  is 
coming  to  marriage  with  them,  you  will  see  it  yet  1 
The  day  will  arrive  of  the  great  dispensation,  the  Pope 
himself  will  put  his  hand  to  it.  He  will  find  that  this 
community  is  hurtful  to  the  land,  and  soon  you  will 
have  free  for  the  marriage-bond  those  fine  fellows 
who  take  your  fancy!**  The  poet  now  finds  himself 
to  his  discomfiture  the  object  of  general  attention.  He 
is  hailed  forward  to  the  table  by  his  conductor,  and 
convicted  of  being  thirty  and  unmarried.  In  a  clever 
and  amusing  passage  he  gets  in  an  account  of  himself, 
his  personal  appearance  and  habits,  his  popularity 
with  the  gentry  (Merriman  had  acted  as  tutor  in 
several  houses),  his  musical  gifts — it  is  plain  that  he 
deserves  no  mercy.  They  decide  to  make  a  terrible 
example  of  him,  and  sentence  him  to  be  flayed  alive ! 
The  date  of  this  important  decision  is  being  called  out 
in  the  court  when  the  poet — awakes. 

It  would  be  unbecoming  in  us  to  add  anything  to 
the  judicious  words  of  Aoibhell  in  summing  up  this 
delicate  case.  The  vexed  question  or  a  celibate 
clergy,  is  it  not  discussed  exhaustively  in  the  pages  of 
Lea  and  of  Lecky?  The  poet  who  delivered  himself 
of  this  powerful  piece  of  social  criticism  was  himself 
little  of  a  reformer,  and  his  poem,  which  continued  to 
be  treasured  in  the  memory  of  Gaelic  speakers  till  well 
toward  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  does  not 
appear  to  have  caused  any  particular  scandal.  Would 
this  have  been  so  had  he  written  his  poem  in  English  ? 


56  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

If  not,  the  inference  is  that  EngUsh  was  even  then 
the  accepted  language  of  the  people,  for  the  lauiguage 
in  which  ideas  have  play  and  influence  is  surely  the 
language  of  its  thought  and  literature.  Or  was  it  that 
freedom  of  thought  and  speculation  was  natural  to 
the  Irish  in  their  Gaelic  speech,  but  that  in  presence 
of  the  hated  English  they  maintained  an  appearance 
of  rigid  and  conventional  orthodoxy  ?  Merriman  lived 
on  till  1805,  in  which  year  his  death  is  recorded  in  a 
Limerick  newspaper  :  **  On  Saturday  morning,  after 
a  few  hours'  illness,  in  Old  Clare  Street,  Mr.  Brian 
Merriman,  Teacher  of  Mathematics,  etc." 

1905. 


ST.  PATRICK  ON  THE  STAGE 

IF  St.  Patrick  were  only  a  saint,  there  would 
be  little  more  to  say  about  him.  When 
virtue  has  reached  the  degree  of  saint- 
ship,  or  even  of  extreme  heroism,  it 
passes  necessarily  beyond  the  ken  of 
modern  imagination,  which  has  not  as  yet  evolved  its 
own  ideals  of  moral  perfection;  so  that  it  is  not  by 
the  saints,  or  by  such  spotless  heroes  as  Perceval  and 
Bayard,  that  our  minds  are  dominated  nowadays,  but 
by  the  more  or  less  equivocal  characters  of  such  beings 
as  Hamlet,  Don  Quixote,  Faust,  or  Don  Juan.  Not 
only  indeed  can  we  no  longer  portray  saints,  but  when 
we  undertake  to  portray  devils  and  malefactors,  we 
find  ourselves  making  heroes  of  them.  We  all  know 
the  effect  produced  by  Milton's  rendering  of  the  myth 
in  Genesis.  Having  learned  to  know  Satan,  we 
conceived  a  certain  liking  for  him ;  we  saw  his  position, 
and  how  inevitable  it  was  that  a  personality  like  his, 
fretting  itself  out  among  the  supple-kneed  seraphim, 
would  come  sooner  or  later  into  collision  with  a  deity 
so  jealous  of  individuality  as  Jehovah.  Satan  fell, 
and,  at  least  according  to  Milton,  everything  that  was 
the  least  interesting  in  heaven  fell  with  him;  and  the 
practical  moral  of  Milton's  whole  experiment  is  that 
we  moderns  are  as  yet  far  from  being  qualified  to 
treat  sympathetically  of  celestial  matters,  and  that 
until  we  can  state  Jehovah's  side  of  the  case  with  a 
little   more   sympathetic   insight   than   Milton   shows. 


58  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

and  a  little  more  sincerity  of  aspiration  for  the  colour- 
less round  of  a  heavenly  day,  we  would  do  well  not  to 
enter  into  rivalry  as  to  these  things  with  the 
conceptions  of  past  civilizations,  which  gave  them- 
selves up  to  spiritual  contemplation  as  we  to  mundane 
energy  and  desire.  If  Patrick,  then,  were  only  a  saint, 
we  should  not  think  much  about  him  nowadays  :  long 
ere  this  he  would  have  faded  into  the  inane  with  St. 
Andrew,  St.  George,  and  St.  David.  Patrick,  how- 
ever, has  a  literary  vitality  quite  peculiar  to  himself 
among  patron  saints;  and  his  figure,  so  far  from 
shrinking  to  insignificance  under  the  application  of 
the  higher  criticism,  stands  out  all  the  more  impres- 
sively and  honourably  when  his  story  is  told  as  it 
probably  happened — as,  for  instance,  Aubrey  De 
Vere  in  some  of  his  idylls  has  told  it.  His  fame  as  a 
man  still  keeps  alive  the  marvellous  history  which 
made  him  the  theme  of  Marie  de  France  in  the  twelfth 
century,  and  of  the  Trouveres,  and  in  the  seventeenth 
century  of  Calderon.  Calderon's  drama  is  without 
doubt  Patrick's  most  distinguished  appearance  in 
literature.  In  this  play,  however,  Calderon  has  placed 
the  saint  under  a  dramatic  disadvantage  by  introducing 
as  his  spiritual  proteg6  a  reprobate  of  the  finest 
Castilian  quality,  Luis  Enius,  whose  psychological 
experience  so  fascinated  Shelley.  No  saint,  indeed, 
could  compete  on  the  Spanish  stage  with  an  imper- 
sonation so  congenial  to  it  as  the  **  Irish  soldier  "  who, 
having  enjoyed  every  form  of  wickedness,  insists  at 
the  last  moment  on  enjoying  heaven  as  well. 

During  the  highest  development  of  the  Spanish 
drama,  it  was  still  possible  for  a  saint  to  appear 
without  loss  of  dignity  on  the  stage,  as  he  had  done  in 


ST.  PATRICK  ON  THE  STAGE  59 

the  old  miracle-plays ;  for  the  Spanish  drama,  like  the 
Greek,  but  unlike  the  English,  had  not  cut  itself  adrift 
from  its  religious  origins,  and  so  remained  a  far  more 
truly  national  institution  than  the  English  drama  ever 
tecame  after  the  Reformation.  Indeed,  it  is  hard  to 
say  what  might  have  become  of  the  English  drama 
when,  owing  to  the  Reformation,  it  had  forfeited  a 
permanent  source  of  romantic  interest  in  the 
mystical  and  miraculous,  but  for  the  accident,  as  it 
were,  that  the  '*  higher  education,"  lately  inaugurated 
at  the  universities,  had  already  begun  to  yield  its 
unfailing  crop  from  year  to  year  of  youths  whom  it 
has  incapacitated  for  gaining  a  livelihood  in  the  usual 
ways,  and  that  among  these  were  certain  intellectual 
adventurers  who  were  driven  by  want  of  pence  to  take 
the  crude  popular  theatre  out  of  the  hands  of  interlude- 
makers  and  doggerel  comedians,  as  in  our  own  times 
their  descendants  have  taken  journalism  out  of  the 
hands  of  reporters  and  publishers'  hacks.  In  the 
London  taverns  they  hatched  the  project  of  a 
Renaissance  drama,  and  ranged  all  countries  and  all 
histories  for  subjects.  Whatever  their  drama  lacked, 
there  was  no  lack  of  variety.  Yet  the  new  Renais- 
sance drama  never  had  the  support  of  the  people  as 
the  drama  had  in  Spain.  For  one  cultivated  English- 
man who  took  a  patriotic  interest  in  the  new  blank- 
verse  play,  there  were  probably  at  least  a  dozen  who 
did  not  give  two  thoughts  to  the  stage,  and  were  far 
more  ready  to  discuss  the  latest  innovations  in  doctrine 
from  Geneva  and  Holland.  On  the  other  hand, 
scholarly  courtiers  like  Raleigh  were  delighted  with 
the  academic  element  in  the  new  drama,  and 
encouraged  its  free  expression.     It  was  not,  however. 


60  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

these  **  university  wits,"  but  their  prodigiously 
assimilative  and  business-like  young  colleague  from 
Warv^ickshire,  who  turned  the  court  favour  to  full 
account,  and  created  a  drama  which  gained  as  much 
as  it  lost  in  permanent  value  by  its  estrangement  from 
popular  interests.  Wonder  is  still  expressed  that 
Shakspeare's  contemporaries  failed  to  recognize  in  him 
what  he  was;  yet  surely  no  further  exj^lanation  is 
needed  than  that  among  all  his  creations  there  is  not 
one  which  indicates  the  slightest  sympathy  in  their 
author  with  those  political  and  religious  aspirations 
into  which  more  and  more  with  each  succeeding  year 
of  his  life  the  intellect  and  energies  of  his  nation  were 
passing.  Outside  the  romantic  world  which  he  created 
for  himself,  no  very  serious  drama  was  possible  on  a 
stage  devoted  chiefly,  more  and  more,  to  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  anti-Puritan  party.  As  James's  reign 
crept  on,  and  the  favour  of  the  people  became  more 
and  more  worth  having,  and  that  of  the  court  less,  his 
successors  became  discouraged;  and  even  before  his 
death  we  find  Beaumont  regretting  the  days  when  they 
sallied  from  the  Mermaid  Tavern  as  from  a  citadel. 
No  dramatists  could  have  taken  their  art  more 
seriously  than  Jonson,  Massinger,  or  Shirley,  who 
seem  to  have  written  less  for  an  audience  than  with 
a  view  to  the  ultimate  publication  of  their  collected 
works;  but  no  amount  of  artistic  seriousness  could 
make  a  drama  serious  which  was  estranged  from  the 
religious  culture  of  the  nation,  and  ordinary  people 
began  to  find  the  churches  much  more  interesting  than 
the  theatres. 

In   1635,  when  the  theatres  were  closed  for  a  time 
owing   to   the    plague,    James   Shirley   came   over   to 


ST.  PATRICK  ON  THE  STAGE  6t 

Dublin  in  order  to  help  his  friend  Ogilby,  Wentworfh's 
Master  of  the  Revels,  in  starting  the  new  theatre  in 
Werburgh  Street,  the  first  theatre  founded  outside 
London.  Shirley's  visit  to  Dublin  has  puzzled  hia 
biographers,  who  have  tried  to  explain  it  by  suggest- 
ing that  the  Chief  Justice,  Sir  George  Shirley,  was  his 
relative.  But  it  is  not  hard  to  conceive  what  must 
have  interested  this  Catholic  poet  in  the  new  theatre 
at  such  a  moment.  Dublin  was  then,  indeed,  a 
Protestant  town  chiefly;  but  it  had  that  necessity  of  a 
theatre  in  those  days,  a  court  anxious  to  encourage 
one,  while  in  the  background  was  a  population  in 
which,  whatever  its  indifference  and  ignorance,  there 
was  no  such  sullen  antipathy  to  **  stage-plays  "  as 
was  paralysing  the  English  theatre.  Instead  of  a 
nation  filled  with  hostility  or  indifference  to  the  stage, 
there  was  here  a  nation  in  which  the  drama  might 
have  a  distinct  part  to  play,  both  in  conciliating  and  in 
educating  the  people.  To  Wentworth,  bent  on 
making  his  court  as  imposing  a  representative  of 
royalty  as  possible,  the  project  of  establishing  a 
theatre  under  the  patronage  of  the  Castle  must  have 
been  so  acceptable  that  we  may  perhaps  assume  that 
he  authorized  Ogilby's  invitation  to  the  experienced 
London  manager.  Perhaps,  however,  **  Black 
Tom's  "  favour  may  have  been  in  part  accountable 
for  the  slightness  of  the  interest  shown  in  the 
enterprise  by  the  Dublin  public.  For  hardly  anyone 
came;  and,  in  the  prologues  which  Shirley  wrote  for 
plays  by  Ben  Jonson,  Fletcher,  and  for  several  which 
he  contributed  himself,  he  seems  to  take  the  empty 
houses  as  a  mournful  sort  of  joke  : 


62  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

''I'll  tell  you  what  a  poet  says;  two  year 
He  has  lived  in  Dublin,  yet  he  k^ows  not  where 
To  find  the  city  .... 
When  he  did  live  in  England,  he  heard  say 
That  here  were  men  loved  wit  and  a  good  play; 
Thai  here  were  gentlemen  and  lords;  a  jew 
Were  bold  to  say  there  were  some  ladies  too; 
This  he  believed,  and  though  they  are  not  jound 
Above,  who  k^ows  what  may  be  underground?'* 

He  remained  about  two  years  in  Dublin,  and  before 
leaving  made  a  special  effort  to  **  find  out  the  humoui 
of  its  taste  "  with  a  somewhat  remarkable  play,  5^ 
Patrick  for  Ireland,  with  which  he  seems  to  have 
succeeded  better. 

The  theme  is  the  conversion  of  Ireland  to 
Christianity;  and  the  play  is  interesting,  both  as 
proving  to  the  **  Irish  Irelanders  '*  of  our  own  day  how 
completely  even  then  the  Anglo-Irish  nationality  had 
identified  itself  with  the  country,  and  also  because,  in- 
order  to  interest  an  Irish  audience,  the  author  found 
it  needful  to  introduce  that  religious  element  whose 
exclusion  from  the  Elizabethan  drama  was,  as  already 
«aid,  its  fatal  limitation.  For  a  special  development 
of  drama  in  Dublin  there  had  been  the  necessary 
historical    preparation.  Besides    the    miracle-plays 

which  from  an  early  period  had  been  popular,  the 
trade-guilds  had  accustomed  the  public  to  dramatic 
entertainments.  **  An  ancient  custom,"  says  Walter 
Harris,  **  prevailed  for  a  long  time  in  the  city  of 
Dublin,  always  against  the  great  festivals  of  the  year 
to  invite  the  Lord  Deputy,  the  nobility,  and  other 
persons  of  quality  and  rank  to  an  entertainment  in 


ST.  PATRICK  ON  THE  STAGE  63 

which  they  first  diverted  them  with  stage-plays,  and 
then  regaled  them  with  a  splendid  banquet.'*  These 
stage-plays  were  chiefly  pageants;  and  in  them,  as 
might  be  expected,  we  hear  nothing  of  St.  Patrick  : 
it  was  rather  his  equivocal  rival  St.  George  who 
triumphed,  on  what  was  afterwards  known  as  College 
Green,  in  the  presence  of  both  Irish  and  English  lords. 
That  St.  George  should  not  at  least  occasionally  have 
given  place  to  St.  Patrick  is  the  more  to  be  regretted 
when  we  think  of  the  real  part  which  he  was  even 
then  playing  in  native  Irish  literature,  in  those 
dialogues  with  Oism,  which  might  so  naturally  have 
been  the  starting-point  of  a  school  of  Irish  drama. 
But  except  at  the  Castle,  and  perhaps  at  King's  Inns, 
Dublin  had  seen  nothing  before  Shirley's  visit  of  what 
the  *  mediaeval  drama  had  grown  into ;  and  it  is 
interesting  to  find  that  the  first  play  which  seems  to 
have  interested  an  Irish  audience  had  in  it  something 
of  the  character  of  a  miracle-play. 

After  all  this,  some  account  of  the  play  may  be 
expected;  but  the  story  hardly  bears  telling.  If 
Shirley  could  have  maintained  the  style  and  spirit  of 
the  first  act,  in  which  the  alarm  of  the  Druids  is 
represented,  and  the  approach  of  St.  Patrick  with  his 
guardian  angel, 

"  a  pale  man  coming  jrom  the  sea. 

Attended  by  a  tribe  oj  reverend  men," 

the  play  would  have  had  a  unique  character  among^ 
the  productions  of  the  later  Elizabethan  drama;  and 
we  must  believe  that  this  is  the  kind  of  play  which 
the    author   would    have    liked    to   write.         But    hia 


64  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

audience  in  Werburgh  Street  was  as  disinclined  to 
listen  to  an  elevated  play  on  an  Irish  subject  as  an 
**  Irish  Ireland  "  audience  in  Abbey  Street  now  is  to 
listen  to  a  burlesque.  The  moral  depravity  of  the 
mere  Irish,  their  absurd  notions  of  poetry,  and  the 
infamies  of  their  original  religion  had  to  be  exhibited 
for  the  delectation  of  the  Anglo-Irish;  and  only  at  the 
close  of  the  play,  where  Patrick  drives  out  the  serpents, 
does  it  recover  the  tone  with  which  it  opens.  Most 
of  it  is  taken  up  with  the  intrigue  of  the  prince 
Corybreus,  who,  in  order  to  win  Milcho's  daughter 
Emeria,  disguises  himself  as  the  god  whom  she 
specially  adores,  and  is  at  last  stabbed  to  death  by 
her  on  his  detection.  Here,  as  always,  Shirley  misses 
his  dramatic  opportunity;  for  if  Emeria,  otherwise  an 
interesting  creation,  could  have  been  made  to  raise 
her  hand  against  a  god,  she  would  have  become  a 
symbol — almost  Greek — of  the  revolt  of  a  pure  human 
nature  against  obscene  superstition.  To  a  Catholic 
poet,  however,  this  would  in  any  case,  perhaps,  hardly 
occur;  and  we  must  admire  the  tact  with  which 
Shirley,  writing  for  a  bigoted  Protestant  audience, 
manipulates  his  main  subject  of  the  conversion  of 
Ireland,  not,  as  Calderon  does,  making  it  an  occasion 
for  the  glorification  of  his  Church.  To  have  taken 
Patrick  more  seriously  than  Shirley  has  done,  to  have 
told  his  early  story  in  detail  like  Calderon,  to  have 
armed  him  with  a  wonder-working  crucifix,  or  eve^^ 
to  have  alluded  to  his  crowning  miracle  of  opening 
that  door  into  Purgatory  and  Paradise  which  had  a 
few  years  previously  been  destroyed  by  order  of  the 
English  Government,  would  have  been  to  rufHe  the 
:serene  conviction  of  Irish  Protestants  that  Patrick  was 


ST.  PATRICK  ON  THE  STAGE  65 

a  kind  of  advance-guard  of  their  ascendancy.  Still 
he  permits  himself  some  appeals  to  a  more  enlightened 
patriotism  which  must  have  existed  among  his 
audience,  as  where  the  saint  foretells  the  coming  glory 
of  Ireland  : — 

'^^  This  nation 
Shall  in  a  jair  succession  thrive,  and  grow 
Up  the  world's  academy,  and  disperse, 
As  the  rich  stream  oj  human  and  divine 
Knowledge,  clear  streams  to  water  foreign  l^ingdoms; 
Which  shall  be  proud  to  owe  what  they  possess 
In  learning  to  this  great,  all-nursing  Ireland." 

Finally,  with  the  expulsion  of  the  serpents — a  subject 
dear  to  the  Anglo-Irish — he  leaves  his  audience  in 
great  good-humour.  ''St.  Patrick  jor  Ireland  is  a 
failure;  but  it  is  the  failure  of  a  man  of  genius,**  says 
Mr.  Gosse.  A  miracle-play  written  for  a  Protestant 
audience  in  the  seventeenth  century  could  not,  indeed, 
be  anything  but  a  failure;  and  its  chief  interest  now 
perhaps  is  that  it  enables  us,  far  better  than  a  good 
many  of  the  acknowledged  **  sources  **  for  the  period, 
to  realize  how  the  Anglo-Irish  felt  towards  theii 
country  on  the  eve  of  the  Rebellion. 

Shirley  had  meant  to  write  a  second  play  about  St. 
Patrick;  but,  unless  he  had  some  share  in  another 
play  which  had  a  great  success,  Landgartha,  by  Henry 
Burnell,  produced  on  the  following  St.  Patrick*s  Day, 
and  founded  on  a  serpent-story  in  Saxo  Grammaticus, 
he  does  not  seem  to  have  done  anything  towards 
carrying  out  his  purpose,  for  by  that  time  he  was  back 
again  in  London.  Soon  after,  the  Dublin  theatre  was 
closed  owing  to  the  Rebellion.     It  is  perhaps  allow- 


66  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

able  to  speculate  on  what  the  Irish  campaign  of  this 
last  of  the  **  Elizabethans  "  might  have  led  to  had 
he  been  given  a  chance  of  following  it  up. 
Apparently,  in  order  to  interest  Irish  people  in  the 
drama,  he  had  found  it  necessary  to  make  some  appeal 
to  national  feeling.  We  can  hardly  suppose  that  he 
had  any  notion  of  the  richness  of  Celtic  legend,  or 
that  he  had  any  other  feeling  than  that  of  the  ordinary 
Englishman's  contempt  for  the  **  mere  Irishman.'* 
But  it  is  no  stretch  of  probability  to  suppose  that, 
having  been  successful  with  a  Patrick  play,  he  might 
have  gone  on  to  Strongbow,  and  that  a  definite  school 
of  Irish  drama  might  thus  have  been  started,  which, 
although  it  might  have  had  to  wait  till  the  foundation 
of  the  Abbey  Theatre,  sooner  or  later  would  have 
recurred  to  that  one  neglected  vein  of  Irish  literature 
and  legend  awaiting  dramatic  development,  the 
dialogues  of  Oisin  and  Patrick.  To  have  originated 
the  conception  underlying  these  dialogues  is  the  chief 
claim,  one  is  tempted  to  think,  of  Irish  literature  to  be 
taken  seriously.  Nietzsche  is  anticipated  in  the  scorn 
of  Oism  for  the  ideals  of  Christianity.  The  idea  is 
here  supplied,  in  the  light  of  which  not  only  the  gods 
and  heroes  of  ancient  Ireland,  but  the  primitive  ideals 
of  all  the  western  nations,  could  have  been  brought 
into  dramatic  contrast  with  the  ideal  of  moral 
renunciation  communicated  to  European  civilization 
from  the  East.  A  war  of  ideals  might  in  time  have 
conferred  on  a  Celtic  drama  the  glory  of  a  work 
embodying  that  ideal  which  is  destined  to  be 
victorious. 

Shirley  remains  a  distinguished  figure,  although  his 
verses  are  halting  enough,  as  may  have  been  noticed 


ST.  PATRICK  ON  THE  STAGE  67 

in  our  quotations — each  verse,  as  it  were,  seeming 
desirous  of  shouldering  off  responsibiHty  for  being  a 
blank  verse  upon  its  neighbour.  Yet  he  is  still  of  the 
great  company  of  the  Elizabethans,  and  wisdom  and 
beauty  still  blossom  under  his  pen.  He  is  more, 
indeed,  of  a  poet  than  a  dramatist;  nor  can  we  think 
of  him  in  any  age  or  place  as  the  initiator  of  a 
movement  so  bold  as  the  emancipation  of  the  English 
stage  from  the  limitation  imposed  on  it  by  the 
Shakspearians,  who  made  it  the  satellite  of  a  court, 
and  estranged  it  from  the  religious  culture  of  the 
people.  To  please  his  aristocratic  audience, 
Shakspeare  had  for  the  most  part  been  content  to 
make  game  of  the  people,  and  bring  them  on  the 
stage  in  a  pall-mall  of  clowns  and  yokels.  And  all 
the  while  these  clowns  and  yokels,  small  tradespeople 
and  country  farmers,  were  slowly  acquiring  the  con- 
viction that  they,  and  not  the  court,  were  the  real 
nation.  Shakspeare,  apparently,  little  suspected  that 
one  of  his  tinkers,  Christopher  Sly  or  Snout,  had  it  in 
him  to  write  The  Pilgrim's  Progress,  A  new  genera- 
tion was  soon  to  arise  whose  ignorance  of  Shakspeare 
is  the  mark  no  less  of  the  limitations  of  Puritanism 
than  of  his  own  art.  Every  speculation  as  to  the 
private  life  of  Shakspeare  seems  fanciful;  yet  the 
suggestion  of  Professor  Barrett  Wendell  that,  in  the 
three  last  silent  years  of  his  life,  he  had  *'  felt  a 
check,"  has  a  strong  fascination.  In  1642,  when  the 
Long  Parliament  closed  the  theatres,  Shirley  was 
maintaining  quite  creditably  the  tradition  of  a  drama 
which  had  no  relation  to  the  serious  life  of  the  people. 
**  Whereas  the  distressed  state  of  Ireland,  steeped  in 
her  own  blood,  and  the  distracted  state  of  England, 
F 


68  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

threatened  with  a  cloud  of  blood  by  a  civil  war,  call 
for  all  possible  means  to  appease  and  avert  the  wrath 
of  God  '* — so  began  the  proclamation.  James  Shirley 
went  back  to  his  former  life  as  a  schoolmaster;  and, 
to  judge  by  his  preface  to  the  first  folio  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  and  by  his  famous  lines,  **  The  glories 
of  our  blood  and  state,*'  said  to  have  been  written  on 
the  occasion  of  Charles's  death,  he  remained  firm  in 
his  literary  admirations  and  in  his  loyalty.  At  the 
Restoration  his  plays  were  revived  without  success; 
and  he  found  himself  regarded  as  an  old  fogey  by 
Dryden  and  his  circle.  In  1666,  an  old  man  of 
seventy,  he  died,  together  with  his  wife,  from  exposure 
in  the  streets  during  the  Fire  of  London. 

1907.' 


THOMAS  MOORE  AS  THEOLOGIAN 

i  E  lose  our  taste  for  theology  almost  as  easily 
as  our  feeling  for  poetry,  and  from  much 
the  same  causes.  Our  poetry  fails  to 
interest  us  after  youth,  not  merely 
because  it  suffers  from  rivalry  with  the 
practical  affairs  of  life  :  for  the  most  part  it  is  not  as 
yet,  properly  speaking,  a  literature  for  men;  it 
expresses  emotional  states  merely,  clings  to  the 
illusions  of  youth  and  does  not  attend  man  to  the 
market-place,  or  even  to  meditative  solitude,  as  his 
counsellor  and  consoler.  In  youth,  when  life  is  still 
before  us,  and  presumably  all  the  delightful  and 
passionate  experiences  of  which  our  modern  poetry  is 
the  expression,  this  expression  has  an  immense 
attraction  for  us,  and  for  a  brief  period  we  run  through 
the  entire  gamut  of  this  proxy  experience;  presently, 
however,  when  we  begin  to  suspect  that  life  is  not 
going  to  be  quite  what  we  fancied — that,  in  fact,  it  is 
likely  to  go  to  a  rather  thin  and  reedy  tune  strummed 
on  the  one  or  two  inherited  aptitudes  (or  inaptitudes) 
that  we  may  have — we  soon  learn  to  leave  poetry  to 
cranks  and  pedagogues,  and  to  look  askance  at  those 
dreamers  who  continue  in  middle  age  to  murmur  to 
themselves  Keats'  odes  or  Shelley's  melodious 
rhapsodies.  Whenever  literature  has  been  really 
great,  its  aim  has  been  the  comparatively  simple  one 
of  combining  amusement  with  edification,  and  it  is 
owing  to  their  excessive  dread  of  trenching  on  what 


70  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

has  been  regarded,  since  the  days  of  the  Apostles,  as 
the  peculiar  province  of  the  clergyman,  that  our  poets 
have  so  little  to  offer  us  once  we  are  grown  at  all 
scarred  and  disillusioned.  If  there  has  ever  been  a 
great  poet  who  was  not  also  a  good  deal  a  theologian, 
we  should  like  to  hear  his  name.  It  is  certainly  only 
such  poets  who  add  something  to  that  still  scanty 
**  literature  abounding  in  subjects  of  meditation"  to 
which  Schlegel  looked  forward,  and  which,  as  some 
have  fancied,  will  one  day  give  Western  culture  its 
**  sacred  book."  But  no,  the  day  of  sacred  books  is 
over  !  It  is  the  end  of  poetry  now,  and  of  the  arts 
generally,  not  to  write  the  Upanishads  or  to  build  the 
Parthenons  of  the  future,  but  to  awaken  in  man  new 
faculties  of  thought  and  vision.  It  is  for  our  poets  to 
restore  those  private  interests  without  which  life  is 
scarcely  decent;  and  only  when  they  have  taken  over 
that  whole  region  hitherto  abandoned  to  clergymen 
will  our  poetry  begin  to  speak  with  the  Oriental 
largeness  and  authority. 

These  remarks  may  seem  out  of  key  with  the 
associations  raised  by  the  name  of  Thomas  Moore, 
but  they  are  suggested  by  the  interest  in  theological 
matters  which  distinguished  him  in  common  with  poets 
much  greater  than  himself.  This  taste  of  his  is  the 
more  noteworthy  when  we  consider  him  as  the 
principal  founder  of  Anglo-Irish  literature,  a  literature 
in  which  a  genial  vein  of  theological  originality  has 
been  perhaps  the  chief  deficiency.  When  we  speak 
of  Moore  as  a  theologian,  however,  we  must  make  a 
distinction.  The  need  of  a  metaphysical  background 
for  his  world,  a  sense  of  the  mystery  of  things,  was 
no  part  of  his  poetic  constitution.       His  well-known 


THOMAS  MOORE  AS  THEOLOGIAN  71 
lines,  *'  This  world  is  but  a  fleeting  show,"  hardily 
seem  charged  with  any  characteristic  emotion;  and 
when,  in  the  presence  of  Mont  Blanc,  he  was  moved 
to  record  his  conviction  that  '*  there  is  a  God,"  he 
forgot,  as  Hazlitt  said,  that  "  the  poet  himself,  standing 
at  the  foot  of  it,  however  diminutive  in  appearance, 
was  a  much  greater  proof  of  his  own  argument  than  a 
huge,  shapeless  lump  of  ice."  Of  Moore's  complete 
indifference  to  theology,  in  the  more  general  sense  of 
the  word,  we  may  judge  by  the  fact  that  in  his  Lalla 
Rool^h  we  have  the  product  of  a  study  of  much  the 
same  authorities  as  Goethe  used  for  his  Westostlicher 
Divan,  When  we  call  him  a  theologian,  then,  we  use 
the  word  in  the  sense  which  it  usually  bears  among 
his  fellow-countrymen,  and  as  signifying  one  who  is 
versed  in  the  **  Protestant  and  Roman  Catholic 
controversy."  Theology,  in  this  restricted  sense,  was 
Moore's  life-long  hobby ;  and  in  his  Travels  oj  an  Irish 
Gentleman  in  search  oj  a  Religion  he  made  a  contribu- 
tion to  it  of  some  importance.  Certain  discoveries 
which  he  had  made  in  the  course  of  a  long  experience 
in  the  drawing-rooms  of  the  English  aristocracy  had 
thrown  something  of  a  new  light  on  the  faith  of  his 
childhood. 

"  Tom  dearly  loves  a  lord,"  said  his  friend  Byron; 
and  he  himself  always  declared  that  the  best  society 
was  only  to  be  found  among  titled  people.  On  certain 
occasions,  when  he  found  himself  in  the  company  of 
the  great  and  aggrieved  poets  of  his  time,  whom  he 
overshadowed  in  the  popular  esteem,  it  was  noticed 
that  he  **  seemed  sensible  of  his  inferiority,"  but  with 
lords  and  ladies  he  mingled  freely  on  his  own  terms. 
Indeed  he  was,  in  a  sense,  a  lord  himself;  for  this  little 


72  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

man  was  understood  to  be  the  owner  of  a  large  poetic 
estate,  to  wit,  Ireland,  a  country  which  has  never, 
perhaps,  been  without  a  kind  of  romantic  attraction 
for  the  imagination  of  Englishmen.  This  poetic 
lordship  of  Ireland  was  held  by  Moore  without  question 
for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  now  that  he  is  in  his  grave 
for  more  than  that  time  it  is  doubtful  whether  any 
successor  to  him  has  appeared  with  title  deeds  equal 
to  his,  either  in  the  opinion  of  the  British  public  or  of 
the  Irish  people.  Across  the  Shannon  and  north  of 
the  Boyne,  there  is  now  a  new,  vaguely  interpreted 
Ireland,  with  lakes  of  uncertain  locality  like  Innisfree; 
but  within  the  ancient  borders  of  the  Pale  and  as  far 
south  as  Killarney  the  human  associations,  without 
which  a  limited  company  would  hardly  risk  planting 
an  hotel  even  in  the  most  beautiful  region,  have  been 
provided  mainly  by  Thomas  Moore.  No  doubt  the 
Irish  Muse  had  ranged  Erin  for  some  high-souled  yet 
careless-minded  young  peasant,  such  as  her 
Caledonian  sister  had  found  a  few  years  earlier  follow- 
ing the  plough ;  but  apparently  her  search  had  been  in 
vain  when  she  hastened  after  the  Aungier  Street 
grocer *s  son,  and  touched  his  trembling  ears  as  he  sate 
before  the  pianoforte  in  England.  In  Moore's  case 
this  is  no  mere  pedantic  Miltonic  metaphor;  it  was 
through  his  ears  that  he  received  that  national  afflatus 
which  his  contemporaries  promptly  recognised  as  his 
distinguishing  merit.  He  had  listened  so  lovingly  to 
the  old  folk  tunes  of  his  country  that  presently,  when 
they  came  dancing  through  his  brain,  words  leaped  up 
in  answering  rhythms,  not  noble  or  magical  words, 
for  the  most  part  the  decorous  diction  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  which  even  when  unaccustomed  to  metrical 


THOMAS  MOORE  AS  THEOLOGIAN  73 
motion  moves  in  his  songs  not  without  an  old-world 
conventional  grace.  As  Mr.  Stephen  Gwynn  says, 
**  Moore  was  really  importing  into  English  poetry 
some  of  the  characteristics  of  a  literature  which  he  did 
not  know."  He  was  the  principal  medium  through 
which  the  melodious  soul  of  Ireland  passed  over  into 
the  English  language.  As  he  came  to  recognise  his 
own  position  as  the  national  poet  of  Ireleuid,  he  began 
to  take  a  new  interest  in  his  intellectual  estate.  He 
remembered  his  early  days  in  Trinity  College,  and  the 
absurd  feeling  of  intellectual  intimidation  once  imposed 
on  him  by  the  Protestgoit  Ascendancy.  Irish 
Protestants  had  been  slow  to  acknowledge  him  as  the 
national  poet,  and  it  was  only  when  they  heard  of  him 
as  moving  in  the  highest  social  circles,  and  as  the 
chosen  intimate  of  the  colossal  Byron,  and  saw  him 
when  he  came  over  here  making  familiarly  for  the 
Viceregal  Lodge,  that  they  ceased  to  annoy  him  by 
calling  him  **  Tom  "  and  not  **  Mr.**  Moore.  And 
now — especially  in  the  light  of  the  new  ideas  coming 
into  vogue  among  Moore's  aristocratic  friends — what 
a  small  affair  seemed  Irish  evangelical  Protestantism  1 
What  a  mean  little  relic  of  provincialism  the 
Protestant  Ascendancy !  What  was  Protestantism 
anyway?  The  question  was  already  beginning  to 
agitate  the  cultured  seclusion  of  Oxford. 

We  can  understand,  then,  and  partly  sympathise 
with  Moore  in  the  feelings  which  prompted  him  to 
publish,  in  1833,  his  Travels  oj  an  Irish  Gentleman, 
a  work  in  which  his  contemporaries  found  it  hard  to 
recognise  the  hand  of  the  **  Irish  Anacreon.*'  He 
knew  how  distasteful  to  Irish  Protestantism  was  that 
development  of  the  Romantic  Movement  in  theology 


74  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

which     was     to     culminate     by     turning     the     most 
piciaresque    figure    in    the    religious    life    of    England 
during  the  nineteenth  century  into  a  cardinal.     In  an 
English  drawing-room  he  could  pour  forth  his  devotion 
to  the  Catholic  Church  unabashed,  as  in  his  beautiful 
song,   *'  Through  grief  and  through  danger  thy  smile 
has  cheer'd  my  way  *' ;  whereas  in  Dublin  his  audience 
would  have  been  nearly  as  much  affronted  by  it  as  the 
ladies  in  Tannhduser  were  by  the  praise  of  Venusberg. 
To  represent  the  altered  situation  of  the  once  haughty 
church  of  Primate  Boulter,  now  with  a  rather  ghastly 
semblance  of  disinterestedness  setting  up  soup-kitchens 
and    Bible-depots   among    the   suddenly   enfranchised 
helots  on  whom  it  still  depended  for  tithes,  he  devised 
the  symbolism  of  an  elderly  maiden  lady  who  has  set 
her  heart  on  becoming  the  mistress  of  Ballymudragget 
Rectory,  with  its  income  of  £2,000  per  annum,  and  to 
that  end  on  the  conversion  of  the  author,  a  lively  young 
Catholic  student  of  Trinity  College — such  a  youth  as 
Moore  remembered  himself  as  being  when  he  was  at 
college  with  Robert  Emmet.     The  author  tells  how 
nearly  he  was  seduced  by  the  prospect  offered  to  him ; 
and  indeed  a  man  with  the  domestic  instincts  of  Moore 
might  well  be  so,   for  however  extravagant  was  his 
notion  of   their  income,   the  Protestant  rectories   are 
still     perhaps     the     most     pleasing-looking     domestic 
objects  that  one  sees  in  the  remoter  parts  of  Ireland — 
peaceful   homesteads   coeval   with   their  embowering 
trees,  contrasting  with  the  more  recent  edifices  of  the 
priests,  which,  with  their  densely-planted  shrubberies 
and  thickly-gravelled  walks,  are  after  all  transparently 
bachelors'  establishments,  destitute  of  that  instinct  for 
nestling      into      nature      in      nature's      way      which 


THOMAS  MOORE  AS  THEOLOGIAN  75 
distinguishes  the  Protestant  rectory.  A  sensitive 
scruple,  however,  withholds  the  hero;  as  the  rector  of 
Ballymudragget  he  would  no  longer  have  the  proud 
feeling  of  belonging  to  a  church  to  which  it  was 
against  his  worldly  interest  to  belong.  Properly 
speaking,  indeed  can  a  church  truly  be  called  a  church 
when  it  has  lost  this  feeling?  '*  The  church  "  should 
surely  be  in  some  kind  of  opposition  to  **  the  world  " ; 
and  Moore,  accustomed  to  belong  to  a  true  and  per- 
secuted church,  felt  quite  genuinely  that  he  would 
hardly  recognise  himself  as  belonging  to  a  church  at 
all  when  it  brought  so  large  a  share  of  that  peace 
which  the  world  can  give.  The  English  Government, 
at  last  thoroughly  understanding  the  situation,  had 
been  setting  itself  to  make  the  antithesis  of  **  church  " 
and  **  world  "  null  and  void  in  Ireland,  and  to  enable 
the  Catholic  clergy  to  live  in  all  the  comfort  of  Bally- 
mudragget Rectory;  and  at  the  time  Moore  wrote  his 
book  had  just  sent  over  one  of  its  strongest  churchmen, 
Whately,  who,  with  the  ingenuous  view  of  weakening 
the  authority  of  the  Catholic  Church,  recommended  its 
establishment.  A  little  earlier  **  Catholic  Emancipa- 
tion "  had  been  granted,  and  it  is  the  news  of  the 
passing  of  this  Act  which  moves  the  hero,  as  he  sits 
in  his  rooms  in  Trinity  College,  to  utter  his  famous 
exclamation,  **  Thank  God,  I  can  now  become  a 
Protestant !" 

The  author  sets  out  on  his  theological  **  travels  " 
confident  that  in  the  teaching  of  the  primitive  Christian 
Church  he  will  find  Protestantism  in  all  its  purity,  but 
to  his  not  very  well-feigned  surprise  finds  that  this 
teaching,  so  far  from  resembling  the  religion  of  the 
Rector  of  Ballymudragget,  is  point  for  point  identical 


76  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

with  that  of  the  poor  despised  Irish  priest. — Many 
have  been  led,  like  the  present  writer,  to  look  into 
Moore's  book  by  its  attractive  title  and  by  the  name 
of  its  author,  and  been  disappointed  to  find  that  it  is 
only  a  somewhat  lively  contribution  to  a  now  happily 
almost  extinct  controversy.  What  the  disputants  in 
this  controversy  seem  never  to  have  perceived  was 
that  Protestantism  and  Catholicism  are  necessary  to 
one  another;  that  the  one  without  the  other  is  as 
inconceivable  as  Liberalism  or  Conservatism  without 
its  rival.  Moore's  rather  unpleasant  book  was 
excessively  resented  by  Irish  Churchmen,  who,  like 
Whately,  believed  that  time  and  education  were  all 
that  was  required  to  turn  Ireland  into  a  Protestant 
country ;  and  within  a  few  months  of  its  appearance  it 
had  been  answered  by  more  than  one  book  as  big  as 
his.  Moore  wisely  said  nothing  more ;  he  was  satisfied 
to  have  got  in  his  word.  They  might  prove  his 
ignorant,  and  even  occasionally  dishonest,  use  of 
quotations  from  the  Fathers;  they  might  assert  with 
some  truth  that  his  book  proved  nothing  but  the 
incapacity  of  such  a  mind  as  his  to  recognize  the 
object  of  his  search  when  found  :  he  had  shown,  at  all 
events,  that  an  **  Irish  Gentleman  "  (a  term  emphasized 
on  his  title-page),  who  had  taken  as  much  pains  as  can 
reasonably  be  expected  from  a  layman  to  inform 
himself  as  to  the  points  of  controversy,  had  yet  no 
mind  to  turn  Protestant.  When  a  man  of  letters,  like 
Moore  or  Kingsley,  intervenes  in  a  controversy  beyond 
his  powers  he  is  generally  guided  by  a  ray  of  real 
perception.  Irish  education  has  advanced  considerably 
since  Whately's  day,  but  Ireland  shows  no  sign  of 
becoming  Protestant;  and  the  Catholic  Church  is  no 


THOMAS  MOORE  AS  THEOLOGIAN      77 

longer  afraid  of  it.  Certainly  neither  Protestantism 
nor  Catholicism  is  going  to  keep  the  modern  spirit  out 
of  Ireland;  but  when  it  succeeds  in  expressing  itself, 
as  it  is  now  striving  to  do,  it  will  probably  take  its 
character  from  the  Catholic  mind  rather  than  from  the 
Protestant;  for  a  real  difference  is  perceptible  in  the 
cast  of  mind  of  those  who  look  back  on  the  beliefs  of 
bygone  generations  from  one  or  the  other  standpoint. 
Ignatius  Loyola  and  Calvin  are  not  more  radically 
distinct  from  one  another  than  are  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau,  Renaui  and  Emerson,  Comte  and  Herbert 
Spencer,  Anatole  France  and  Bernard  Shaw. 

Moore  pleased  very  few  people  with  his  book. 
Catholics  were  offended  by  its  Anacreontic  renderings 
from  the  Fathers,  and  religious  Protestants  derived 
from  it  the  perhaps  correct  opinion  that  the  author 
was  essentially  an  **  infidel."  A  tendency  to  make 
light  of  man's  distinguishing  faculty  of  reason  is  no 
doubt  a  horrible  and  even  diabolical  one,  and  it  was 
this  tendency  in  Moore's  book  which  chiefly  shocked  a 
genuine  religious  genius,  the  Irish-Spaniard  Blanco 
White,  then  residing  in  the  household  of  Archbishop 
Whately.  White  belonged  to  a  Catholic  family  which 
had  been  driven  abroad  by  the  penal  laws;  and  the 
history  of  his  religious  development,  from  strict 
Catholicism  to  a  kind  of  Christian  rationalism,  is 
almost  an  epitome  of  the  historical  development  of 
Christianity.  The  book  with  which,  in  a  few  weeks, 
he  answered  Moore,  Second  Travels  oj  an  Irish 
Gentleman,  contains  a  more  agreeable  story  than 
Moore's,  and  presents  an  array  of  arguments  with  a 
force  only  possible  to  one  whose  whole  heart  lay  in 
the^e  matters.     The  further  progress  of  his  theological 


78  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

opinions  presently  became  a  subject  of  concern  to  the 
archiepiscopal  household,  and  he  withdrew  to 
Liverpool,  where  he  died  after  a  few  miserable  years — 
a  religious  outcast.  His  Rationalist  a  Kempis  has 
recently  been  reprinted;  but  he  is  now  remembered 
chiefly  as  the  author  of  a  sonnet  pronounced  by 
Coleridge  the  most  grandly  conceived  in  the  English 
language,  which,  as  a  genuine  example  of  that  still 
scanty  theological  poetry  to  which  we  have  alluded, 
we  shall  conclude  by  quoting  : —   ^ 

*^  Mysterious  Night!     When  our  first  parent  kpew 
Thee  jrom  report  divine,  and  heard  thy  name. 
Did  he  not  tremble  jor  this  lovely  jrame, 
This  glorious  canopy  of  light  and  blue  ? 
Yet,  'neath  a  curtain  oj  translucent  dew. 
Bathed  in  the  rays  oj  the  great  setting  flame, 
Hesperus  with  the  host  oj  heaven  came. 
And  lol  Creation  widened  in  mans  view. 
Who  could  have  thought  such  darkness  lay  concealed 
Within  thy  beams,  O  Sun!  or  who  could  find. 
Whilst  flow'r  and  leaj  and  insect  lay  revealed. 
That  to  such  countless  orbs  thou  mad'st  us  blind! 
Why  do  we  then  shun  Death  with  anxious  strije  ? 
Ij  Light  can  thus  deceive,  wherejore  not  Lije  ?'* 

1911. 


IRISH  BOOKS 

^HERE  is  something  so  incurably  wrong 
with  the  world  that  it  is  hardly  possible 
to  rectify  one  wrong  in  it  without 
introducing  another.  The  moment  we 
begin  to  attend  to  the  affairs  of  others, 
with  the  notion  that  our  own  are  fully  looked  after, 
that  moment  we  begin  to  act  on  an  assumption  of 
omniscience  which  will  be  punished,  either  in  our  own 
experience  or  in  that  of  others.  Thus  England,  m 
suppressing  the  native  wars  in  India,  the  burning  of 
widows,  etc.,  has  raised  even  greater  embarrassments 
for  itself  in  over-population  and  famine ;  and  somewhat 
similarly  our  modern  libraries,  in  their  determination 
that  posterity  shall  miss  no  line  of  what  we  have  been 
pleased  to  write  during  the  past  hundred  years  or  so, 
have  already  almost  hopelessly  depreciated  the  value 
of  the  written  word  and  rendered  it,  one  would  think, 
a  nearly  impossible  task  for  posterity  to  fix  on  those 
books  which  deserve  immortality.  We  may  even 
doubt  whether  in  the  world  of  books  some  struggle  for 
existence  is  not  the  best  security  for  the  survival  of 
the  fittest,  and  whether  books  of  the  giant  order  are 
likely  to  appear  under  conditions  so  entirely  favourable 
to  book-production  as  the  present.  It  is  characteristic 
of  nearly  all  such  books  that  they  have  been  produced 
by  a  kind  of  accident,  the  authors  being  anxious 
perhaps  to  beguile  the  hours  of  exile  or  imprisonment, 
or  like  Milton  to  prove  a  thesis,  or  like  Shakspeare  to 


80  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

make  a  fortune — to  avenge  themselves,  to  confess 
themselves,  and  so  forth.  Authors  who  have  been 
most  resolute  to  produce  literary  masterpieces  have, 
as  a  rule,  produced  the  least  satisfactory  ones. 
Humanity  is  endlessly  curious  about  itself,  and  is  not 
to  be  put  off  in  its  quest  of  some  authentic  revelation 
of  itself  by  the  most  imposing  array  of  vocables,  as 
the  Landors  and  Swinburnes  appear  at  times  to  have 
supposed.  The  real  book  is  an  embodiment  of  some 
profound  human  experience;  and  thus  the  scholar, 
who  passes  his  time  in  conning  the  records  of  other 
ages — for  happily  it  is  the  real  books  which  hitherto 
have  tended  to  survive — is  not  so  unsocial  as  he  may 
seem  to  be,  for  he  is  really  conversing  with  the  souls 
of  peoples,  or  with  mankind  itself,  in  a  more  direct 
and  satisfactory  manner  than  is  possible  in  the  most 
unconventional  assemblies,  where  it  is  hard  for  the 
most  part  to  see  mankind  for  the  men. 

Something  of  the  old-fashioned  coyness  in  putting 
one's  name  on  a  title-page  lingered  on  even  in  Scott, 
but  in  general  it  may  be  said  that,  with  the  great 
psychological  change  which  came  over  the  world  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  literature  assumed 
a  new  and  corporate  dignity  in  the  various  nations, 
and  it  was  generally  felt  that  every  country  with 
separate  frontiers,  just  as  it  ought  to  have  a  senate- 
house  and  an  army,  ought  also  to  have  its  array  of 
poets.  Indeed,  could  the  retreat  of  the  Muses  have 
been  discovered,  there  has  hardly  been  a  European 
statesman  since  that  period  who  would  not  have 
regarded  it  as  his  most  adroit  public  action  to  place 
one  of  his  country's  mountains  at  their  disposal. 
Accordingly  in  Ireland,  during  the  early  decades  of 


IRISH  BOOKS  81 

the  nineteenth  century,  we  had  quite  a  number  of 
writers — many  of  them  encouraged  in  their  laudable 
ambition  by  government  pensions — who  set  them- 
sqlves,  in  the  phrase  of  the  time,  to  be  the  **  Irish 
Walter  Scott,"  the  **  Irish  Burns,"  the  *'  Irish 
Beranger,"  and  so  forth.  So  far  as  Scott  was 
concerned  they  were  well  entitled  to  adopt  his  method, 
for  it  had  been  from  an  Irish  writer.  Miss  Edgeworth, 
that  the  Wizard  of  the  North,  at  least  he  said  so 
himself,  had  filched  his  fire.  Neither  Gerald  Griffin, 
however,  nor  the  Banims,  dexterous  and  inventive 
though  they  were,  ever  quite  succeeded  in  reproducing 
his  magical  blend  of  romance  and  reality,  nor  in 
diverting  the  attention  of  the  vast  reading  public  of 
the  new  era  from  Scotland  to  Ireland.  It  may  be 
doubted  whether  Scott  was  an  entirely  fortunate 
influence  at  this  period ;  whether,  but  for  his  dazzling 
vogue,  some  Irish  writer  might  not  have  stumbled  on 
the  secret  of  Turgenev,  and  so  made  the  literary 
fortune  of  his  country.  The  incomparable  Scottish 
advocate,  who  delighted  to  show  visitors  round  his 
Highlands,  and  whose  tales  and  poems  form  a  sort  of 
guide-book  for  that  public  and  that  posterity  which 
he  could  not  conduct  personally,  was  a  little  too  much 
of  the  showman  to  make  an  entirely  profitable  model 
for  these  ambitious  and  self-respecting  writers.  As 
usual,  when  a  man  of  distinctive  genius  did  arrive  he 
was  a  little  disconcerting;  he  appeared  (of  all  places  !) 
in  a  quarter,  at  the  mere  mention  of  which  any  Irish- 
man with  the  least  pretension  to  true  culture  and 
liberality  will  shrug  his  shoulders — in  the  pages  of  a 
proselytizing  magazine  !  Carleton  was  the  man  sent  by 
God  in  response  to  the  general  clamour  for  an  Irish 


82  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

Walter  Scott.  As  Shakespeare  came  out  of  the  heart 
of  England,  so  Carleton  came  from  Tyrone,  the  locality 
in  which  the  three  elements  of  modern  Irish  nationality 
were  most  naturally  blended;  and  as  he  declares 
himself  in  his  proud  and  bitter  Autobiography,  **  there 
never  was  any  man  of  letters  who  had  an  opportunity 
of  knowing  and  describing  the  manners  of  the  Irish 
people  so  thoroughly  as  I."  His  Catholic  country- 
men, however,  have  never  been  the  chief  admirers  of 
this  apostate;  indeed,  it  was  not  till  Davis  had  got 
hold  of  him — when  unfortunately  it  was  too  late — that 
he  set  himself  to  write  with  deliberately  patriotic 
intentions.  A  man,  like  Burns,  of  immense  natural 
ability,  who  felt  himself  the  equal  of  anyone,  he  wrote 
of  the  life  which  he  knew,  and  Catholic  Ireland  had 
in  the  author  of  the  Traits  and  Stories  a  literary 
interpreter  such  as  it  has  never  had  before  or  since. 
Ireland's  anger  burned  in  him  duly,  but,  unfortunately, 
in  him  it  was  directed  impartially  against  foreign 
oppression  and  the  religious  perversity  of  his 
countrymen,  which,  in  their  united  effects,  had  so 
heavily  handicapped  him  in  the  struggle  for  life. 
Unlucky  Carleton !  Catholic  Ireland  would  have 
applauded  for  ever  the  man  who  would  have  done 
for  her  history  and  for  her  heroes  what  Scott  had  done 
for  those  of  his  country;  and  it  is  conceivable  that 
Carleton,  who  plumed  himself  a  good  deal  on  his 
rather  remarkable  physical  resemblance  to  Sir  Walter, 
might,  with  a  little  more  adroitness  than  he  displayed 
through  life,  have  rejoiced  with  dogs  and  horses  in  an 
Irish  Abbotsford.  But  his  early  experiences  had 
hardly  prepared  him  for  representing  Ireland's  history 
and  antiquities  (about  which  he  cared  nothing)  under 


IRISH  BOOKS  83 

that  veil  of  romantic  illusion  through  which  they  are 
still  viewed  by  many  of  her  sons;  and  nations  have 
no  Abbotsfords  for  writers  who  do  not  flatter  their 
vanity.  Late  in  life  he  declared  his  intention  to  write 
his  autobiography,  into  which,  wrote  he,  **  I  will  pour 
all  the  pent-up  venom  which  has  been  so  long  cor- 
roding my  heart  at  the  ingratitude  and  neglect  which 
I  have  experienced  from  my  country."  He  only 
began  to  write  it,  however,  a  few  months  before  his 
death,  when  suffering  under  one  of  the  most  formidable 
of  mortal  diseases,  and  it  was  with  no  intention  of 
emulating  Rousseau,  but  of  providing  his  daughters 
with  a  little  money,  that  he  produced  what  is,  perhaps, 
the  most  interesting  of  all  Irish  books.  But  for  the 
enterprise  of  Mr.  D.  J.  O'Donoghue,  who  published 
it  in  1896  as  the  first  volume  of  his  Lije  oj  Carleton, 
it  might  never  have  appeared  at  all.  In  the  part 
which  he  completed  he  tells  the  story  of  his  life  up  to 
that  point  at  which  his  experiences  as  an  author  began, 
and  there  is  none  of  the  venom  in  this  part  which  he 
proposed  to  pour  into  it;  on  the  contrary,  there  is 
beauty,  and  the  glamour  with  which  an  old  man's 
memory  invests  his  youth.  The  temperament 
revealed  in  these  pages  is  certainly  a  hard  one.  It  is 
the  temperament  of  the  Irish  peasant,  the  so-called 
Celtic  temperament,  which  is  really  no  doubt  the 
temper amient  of  the  peasant  everywhere,  and  which  is 
only  transformed  and  softened,  perhaps,  by  some  kind 
of  religious  movement.  In  no  other  book  does  the 
Irish  peasant  attain  self-expression  as  he  does  in  this, 
and  nowhere  is  there  an  equally  sympathetic  presenta- 
tion of  that  great  peasant  world  of  which  O'Connell 
was  the  champion,  on  the  eve  of  its  *'  Anglicization/* 
G 


84  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

1  he  mutual  jealousy  and  suspicion  of  the  Protestant 
and  Catholic  branches  of  the  Christian  Church  in 
Ireland  were  now  threatening  to  spoil  not  only 
Ireland's  dreams  of  obtaining  political  independence, 
but  even  her  innocent  and  laudable  desire  to  have  a 
literature;  and  just  as  the  **  Wild  Geese"  of  the 
seventeenth  century  had  taken  service  in  Continental 
armies,  so  now  the  young  men  of  talent  of  provin- 
cialized Ireland,  the  "Wild  Geese"  of  Protestant 
Ascendancy,  took  service  more  and  more  in  the  ranks 
of  London  journalism  or  in  far-off  British  Colonies. 
And  meanwhile  the  new  population  brought  into 
political  existence  by  O'Connell,  and  rapidly  throwing 
over  its  ancient  language,  was  beginning  to  call  for 
something  to  read.  It  was  at  this  time  that  Thomas 
Davis  came  forward,  a  ngime  which  in  some  respects 
is  above  every  other  Irish  name.  Davis  appears  to 
have  impressed  everyone  who  worked  with  him  as 
the  greatest  man  of  his  generation  in  Ireland  :  what 
Lessing  was  to  Germany  (to  compare  small  things 
with  great)  he  gave  promise,  during  his  wonderful 
three  years  of  activity,  of  being  to  this  country. 
Consciously  a  pioneer,  in  him  as  in  no  other  lay  the 
possibility  of  reconciling  the  discordant  elements  of 
Irish  nationality,  for  his  sense  of  the  boundless 
opportunity  offered  to  a  new  European  community  in 
a  spacious  island  of  its  own  was  not  stronger  than  his 
feeling  for  his  country's  heroic  past.  In  particular  he 
found  a  use  for  the  ancient  Gaelic  language  as  a  sort 
of  palladium  of  nationality ;  and  though  we  may  admit 
now  that  he  lost  his  head  a  little  on  this  subject  there 
was  some  excuse  for  him  at  a  time  when  some  millions 
of  Irishmen  were  still  talking  a  language  unknown  to 


IRISH  BOOKS  85 

the  others.  He  himself  had  too  many  irons  in  the 
fire  to  do  much  more  than  dash  off  hurried  prose 
articles  and  verses  as  they  were  wanted,  but  he  was 
the  cause  of  writing  in  other  men,  and  in  the  Nation — 
the  one  literary  enterprise  which  has  excited  general 
enthusiasm  in  Ireland — his  was  the  prevailing 
**  spirit."  In  one  respect  alone  was  Davis  scarcely 
satisfactory.  Whoever  woos  Ireland  must  be  provided 
with  some  answer  to  that  artless  question  which  she 
may  suddenly  spring  on  him,  as  Margareta  did  on 
Faust  :  **  Do  you  believe  in  God?"  It  is  the  distinction 
of  Davis  that  there  was  something  about  him  which 
raised  the  question  of  his  religious  credentials,  nor 
was  he  the  man  to  shirk  the  question  had  it  been 
fairly  asked  him  or  to  put  it  lightly  by.  But  what 
could  the  leader  of  Young  Ireland  do  when  his  already 
favoured  rival,  the  mighty  champion  of  Old  Ireland, 
breathed  into  her  ear  his  private  knowledge  that  the 
young  men  of  the  Nation  were  little  better  thar* 
^*  infidels  "?  Mr.  Rolleston,  who  has  written  well  of 
Davis,  attributes  his  failure,  or  as  he  prefers  to  say, 
the  "interruption  of  his  influence,"  to  the  Famine; 
but  is  it  not  plain  that  Davis,  with  his  noble  passion 
for  national  culture  and  independent  thought, 
belonged  to  a  tradition  which  Ireland,  with  its  many 
rankling  memories,  with  its  indifference  to  the  national 
ideals  of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  later 
w^ith  its  impossible  claims  for  the  Gaelic  language, 
was  preparing  to  repudiate?  His  proposal  to  unite 
Ireland  by  means  of  a  national  culture  which  should 
ignore  the  "  religious  question "  was  a  little  like 
proposing  to  act  Hamlet  without  the  Prince.  In  the 
actual    drama    of    Irish    history    at    that    time    the 


86  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

**  religious  question  "  had  its  full  part  assigned  to  it. 
**  There's  no  offence,  my  lord,"  we  may  figure  Young 
Ireland  as,  somewhat  feebly,  assuring  the  moody 
master  of  the  situation,  and  the  latter  as  replying, 
**  Yes,  by  Saint  Patrick,  but  there  is,  and  much  offence 
too!"  No  sooner  had  the  protagonist  in  the  Irish 
drama  begun  to  take  action  than  Young  Ireland  with 
all  its  ideals  collapsed;  and  as  regards  literature  very 
little  came  of  that  union  of  the  finest  spirits  which 
Ireland  has  seen — nothing  that  can  be  called  a  book. 
There  is  perhaps  one  exception  which  rather  strikingly 
illustrates  our  thesis  of  the  incidental  nature  of  literary 
masterpieces,  John  Mitchel's  Jail  Journal, 

What  ought  now  to  have  happened  was  an  Irish 
Aufklarung — an  Irish  Emerson,  and,  if  not  a  Trans- 
cendental movement,  a  movement  at  any  rate  which 
should  transcend  the  paltry  quarrel  of  Protestant  and 
Catholic,  which  so  far  has  prevented  Ireland  from 
realising  either  its  political  or  literary  ideals.  What 
a  difference  it  would  have  made  had  some  clergyman 
or  parish  priest  transformed  an  Irish  country  town 
or  village — Westport  or  Doneraile — into  an  Irish 
Concord  !  A  thinker  who  would  have  unsealed  the 
fountains  of  thought  and  claimed  the  full  privileges 
of  a  human  being  on  the  soil  of  Ireland  would  have 
brought  it  far  further  toward  the  realisation  of  its 
spiritual  and  political  unity  than  ever  did  Parnell. 
But  Ireland's  hour  was  not  yet  come,  and  just  as, 
after  Davis,  politics  became  once  more  estranged 
from  those  interests  which  ensure  the  support  of  the 
wise,  so  literature  estranged  itself  from  those  common 
interests  which  make  it  genuinely  national.  There 
was,    first,    the    well-meaning    Ferguson,    sometimes^ 


IRISH  BOOKS  87 

really  exalted  in  his  personal  poems  and  adaptations 
from  the  Irish  (particularly  the  noble  Conary)^  but 
whose  more  ambitious  labours  smell  a  little  too  much 
of  the  Record  Office.  There  was  also  the  attenuated 
Wordsworthianism  of  Aubrey  De  Vere.  Lastly 
there  has  been  the  considerable  literary  movement 
initiated  chiefly  by  Mr.  Standish  O'Grady,  styled 
variously  the  '*  Irish  Literary  Revival,'*  the  **  Celtic 
Renascence,'*  &c.,  in  which  the  chief  factor  has 
undoubtedly  been  the  peculiar  genius  of  Mr.  W.  B. 
Yeats.  The  meeting  in  modern  Ireland  of  the  modern 
with  the  ancient  spirit  is  an  important  event,  not 
only  in  the  literary  but  in  the  spiritual  history  of  Ire- 
land, and  perhaps  the  full  significance  of  the  work 
of  Mr.  Yeats  and  /E  will  only  be  apparent  eventually. 
Mr.  Yeats  in  particular  understands  the  ancient  Celtic 
spirit  as  Ronsard  understood  Graeco-Roman  antiquity, 
and  is  imbued  with  it  in  much  the  same  way ;  and 
just  as  it  was  only  when  the  modern  world  had 
learned  to  understand  the  ancient  classics  that  it  began 
to  strike  out  in  every  direction  on  lines  of  its  own,  so 
perhaps  the  spirit  of  Ireland,  through  its  self-recovery 
in  this  last  poet  of  the  line  of  Senchan  Torpeist,  is 
being  made  ready  for  new  beginnings. 

Meanwhile  if  we  ask  whether  the  voluminous 
literary  activity  of  the  last  twenty  years  has  brought 
forth  a  Book,  we  shall  have  difficulty  on  fixing  on  any 
one  work  which  Ireland  seems  likely  to  take  to  its 
affections  permanently.  If  a  masterpiece  should  still 
come  of  this  literary  movement  we  need  not  be 
surprised  if  it  appears  by  a  kind  of  accident  and  in 
some  unexpected  quarter,  and  we  have  a  fancy  that 
appearances  in  modern  Ireland  point  to  a  writer  of 


88  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

the  type  of  Cervantes  rather  than  to  an  ideahsing 
poet  or  romance  writer.  A  hero  as  loveable  as  the 
great  Knight  of  the  Rueful  Countenance  might  be 
conceived,  who  in  some  back  street  of  Dubhn  had 
addled  his  brains  with  brooding  over  Ireland's  wrongs, 
and  that  extensive  but  not  always  quite  sincere 
literature  which  expresses  the  resentment  of  her  sons 
towards  the  stranger.  His  library  would  be  described, 
the  books  which  had  **  addled  the  poor  gentleman's 
brain  "  :  Mitchel's  History  oj  Ireland  would  be  there, 
and  Cobbett's  History  oj  the  Rejormation,  and  Mrs. 
J.  R.  Green's  Making  oj  Ireland  and  Its  Undoing. 
We  can  conceive  him  issuing  forth,  fresh-hearted  as 
a  child  at  the  age  of  fifty,  with  glib  and  saffron- 
coloured  kilt,  to  realise  and  incidentally  to  expose 
the  ideals  of  present-day  Ireland.  What  scenes  might 
not  be  devised  at  village  inns  arising  out  of  his  refusal 
to  parley  with  landlords  in  any  but  his  own  few  words 
of  Gaelic  speech;  what  blanketings,  in  which  our 
sympathies  would  be  wholly  with  the  rebel   against 

the  despotism  of  fact !     His  Dulcinea  would  be 

who  but  Kathleen  ni  Houlihan  herself,  who  really  is 
no  more  like  what  she  is  taken  for  than  the  maiden  of 
Toboso,  but  who,  in  the  addled  masculine  brain  of 
the  Irish  idealist,  is  a  sort  of  wraith  materialising  itself 
on  the  eve  of  chimerical  insurrections — an  old  woman 
(God  save  the  mark!),  not  a  friendly  and  buxom 
wench,  whose  partiality  for  strapping  young 
foreigners,  whether  Danish,  Saxon  or  Scotch,  has 
had  a  great  deal  to  do  in  bringing  about  the  present, 
by  no  means  desperate,  situation  of  modern  Ireland. 
And  such  a  book  as  we  fancy  need  not  really  insult 
or  injure  the  cause  of  Irish  nationality  any  more  than 


IRISH  BOOKS  89 

Cervantes  laughed  real  chivalry  away.  Ireland 
remains,  a  country  inhabited  by  a  new,  freshly- 
compounded,  English-speaking  race  of  men,  equal 
to  any  race  in  physique,  intelligence  and  opportunity; 
a  country  in  which  Euiything  may  happen  once  her 
sons  agree  to  cast  out  delusions  and  to  realise  their 
common  humanity  together.  A  mixture  of  races, 
wrote  Davis,  is  *'  as  much  needed  as  the  mixture  of 
Protestants  and  Catholics."  And  he  addeds  **  If  a 
union  of  all  Irish-born  men  ever  be  accomplished, 
Ireland  will  have  the  greatest  gind  most  varied 
material  for  an  illustrious  nationality,  and  for  a 
tolerant  and  flexible  character  in  literature,  manners, 
religion  and  life,  of  any  nation  on  earth." 

1911. 

This  was  of  course  a  sorry  account  of  the  *'  Irish 
Literary  Renascence";  the  collected  poems  of  Mr. 
Yeats,  /E,  and  others,  Synge's  plays,  etc.,  will 
doubtless  be  called  "books"  by  generations  of  Irish 
readers.  Mr.  James  Stephens'  lively  and  delectable 
vein  had  in  1911  only  begun  to  flow,  and  Mr.  James 
Joyce  had  not  yet  published  his  highly  instructive 
studies  in  the  life  of  those  young  men  who  have  chiefly 
to  be  reckoned  with  nowadays  in  arranging  or  fore- 
casting the  future  of  Ireland.  The  anticipation  in  the 
final  paragraph  might  seem  to  have  had  a  partial 
fulfilm.ent  in  Mr.  George  Moore's  Hail^nd  Farewell. 

1917. 


A    WAY   OF   UNDERSTANDING   NIETZSCHE 


The  tension  of  the  soul  in  misfortune,  which  communicates  to  it  its 
energy,  its  shuddering  in  view  of  rack  and  ruin,  its  inventiver^ss 
and  bravery  in  undergoing,  enduring,  interpreting  and  exploiting 
misfortune,  and  whatever  depth,  mystery,  disguise,  spirit,  artifice 
or  greatness  has  been  bestowed  upon  the  soul — has  it  not  been  bestowed 
through  suffering,  through  the  discipline  of  great  suffering  ?  In 
man  creature  and  creator  are  united  ;  in  man  there  is  not  only 
matter,  shred,  excess,  clay,  mire,  folly,  chaos  ;  but  there  is  also  the 
creator,  the  sculptor,  the  hardness  of  the  hammer,  the  divinity  of  the 
spectator,  and  the  seventh  day  !  " — Beyond   Good  and  Evil. 


|LTHOUGH  Nietzsche  may  fairly  be 
described  as  a  dangerous  author,  there 
is  the  same  kind  of  natural  safeguard 
against  the  corruption  of  his  readers  as 
that  which  preserves  the  schoolboy  from 
corruption  by  the  more  highly-coloured  passages  in  the 
works  of  Horace  and  Ovid  which  are  placed  freely  in 
his  hands,  and  may  excite  the  misgivings  of  parents. 
The  wit  required  to  understand  what  Nietzsche  really 
means  is  as  little  compatible  with  intellectual  gulli- 
bility as  an  aptitude  for  Latin  usually  is  with  the 
depraved  tendencies  of  the  naughty  boy.  The  school- 
master, at  all  events,  is  unlikely  to  complain  if  he 
find  in  these  tendencies  unexpected  allies ;  and  in  like 
manner    divine    philosophy    may    gain    unexpected 


WAY  OF  UNDERSTANDING  NIETZSCHE   91 

adherents   if   the   average,   or   more   than   averagely, 
sensual  man  be  led  on  by  the  popularity  of  Nietzsche's 
lively  phrases  about  Christianity  and  morals  to  make 
acquaintance  with  a  very  rigorous  intellectual  regimen, 
and  to  realize  the  consequences  of  the  proved  falsity 
of     many     notions     of     conventional     morality     and 
established    religion.     Indeed   he   should   be   warned 
that  if  these  have  chastized  him  with  whips,  Nietzsche 
will    chastize    him    with    scorpions.      When    he    has 
parted  with  every  article  of  transcendental  belief,  and 
sacrificed  all  those  arriere-pensees  of  faith  and  morals 
which  are  so  little  in  evidence  in  ordinary  conversa- 
tion, and  yet  are  such  determining  motives  of  ordinary 
conduct,   he  will   find  himself  in   the  presence  of  a 
caustic  and  relentless  mentor  who  will  require  of  him 
— at  the  point  where  he  is  ready  perhaps  to  creep 
into   some   monastery — a   capacity   for    **  gaiety  "    in 
self-abnegation   and   self-annihilation.     He  will   find, 
indeed,    that    several    of    the    gravest    responsibilities 
of  that  God  whom  he  has  repudiated  have  devolved 
upon  himself,  and  will  be  called  upon,   in  a  world 
bankrupt  in  ideals,  to  create  new  moral  values  and 
new  Gods. 

We  must  ireassure  ourselves  a  little  in  face  of 
Nietzsche's  disquieting  denials  of  **  God,  freedom, 
immortality,"  and  all  those  inspiring  ideas,  our  secret 
misgivings  about  which  are  revealed  whenever  a 
single  thinker  is  bold  enough  to  deny  them,  and  seems 
to  precipitate  all  the  stars  of  thought  from  the  sky. 
The  denial  of  **  God  "  and  of  the  ideal  is  from  time 
to  time  necessary,  because  to  attain  to  any  real 
perception  in  such  matters  it  is  necessary  to  live 
creatively  and   to  find   out  these   things  for  oneself. 


92  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

God  as  an  objective  fact  does  not  appear  to  exist. 
Such  is  the  reciprocal  connection  between  the 
individual  and  the  causal  energy  of  the  universe  that 
we  must  create  the  objects  of  our  belief  :  the  whole 
force  of  our  nature  must  go  into  the  achievement. 
The  ordinary  citizen  does  not  like  the  doctrine  of  God 
to  be  challenged  :  he  likes  to  think  of  God  being  there, 
as  he  likes  to  think  of  a  limitless  supply  of  coal  in  the 
bowels  of  Great  Britain.  It  is  on  the  sense  of  moral 
cowardice  in  regard  to  those  beliefs  to  which  we  may 
have  recourse  in  grief  or  in  weakness,  but  which  for 
the  most  part  hardly  bear  examination,  that  Nietzsche 
relies  when  he  comes  with  his  dogmatic  denial  of 
those  beliefs.  A  dogmatist,  however,  is  what  no  man 
has  a  right  to  be  :  and  Nietzsche,  who  is  as  fierce  a 
dogmatist  as  Tertullian,  has  of  all  persons  least  right 
to  complain  if  we  remind  ourselves  of  the  physiological 
conditions  of  his  shrill  assurance.  Most  men  require 
the  stimulus  of  happiness  for  production  of  any  kind, 
but  Nietzsche,  like  Leopardi,  was  one  of  those  who 
only  rise  to  the  height  of  their  powers  under  the 
stimulus  of  pain  and  privation.  He  is  one  of  those 
invalids  who  cannot  breathe  in  the  lower  valleys  of 
thought,  and  can  only  get  the  full  of  their  lungs  when 
hurricanes  are  blov/ing.  The  more  outrageous  the 
statement  to  be  made  the  better  he  is  pleased,  and 
the  more  himself  he  is.  The  bleaker  and  colder  the 
intellectual  landscape  the  more  impetuous  becomes 
his  verve.  We  may  be  sure  that  if  he  rejects  with  so 
much  scorn  *' God,  freedom,  and  immortality,*'  it  is 
because  it  has  cost  him  something  to  do  so. 

His  starting  point  is   the   philosophy  of   Schopen- 
hauer, a  volume  of  which  fell  in  his  wa^  while  he  was 


WAY  OF  UNDERSTANDING  NIETZCHE  93 

a  professor  at  Basle,  and  at  once  completely  filled  his 
mind.  Of  philology,  his  study  till  then,  he  had  said 
in  his  inaugural  lecture  that  it  is  **  neither  a  Muse  nor 
a  Grace,  but  a  messenger  of  the  Gods;  and  as  the 
Muses  formerly  descended  among  the  afflicted  and 
suffering  Boeotians,  this  messenger  comes  to-day  into 
a  world  filled  with  gloomy  and  baneful  shapes,  filled 
with  profound  and  incurable  sufferings,  and  consoles 
us  by  evoking  the  beautiful  and  luminous  forms  of  a 
marvellous,  an  azure,  a  distant,  a  fortunate  country  !" 
Pessimism  is  the  most  restful  of  all  creeds  to  a  mind 
harassed  by  the  disorder  and  vulgarity  of  modern  life, 
and  it  is  out  of  pessimism  that  all  the  religions  have 
originated.  For  pessimism  is  the  affirmation  of  the 
ideal,  and  restores  to  the  mind  what  actuality  refuses. 
To  condemn  existence  as  a  whole  is  to  exempt  from 
all  risk  of  change  and  contamination  by  experience 
those  forms  of  truth  and  beauty  which  the  mind  creates 
or  of  which  it  can  entertain  the  supposition.  Pessi- 
mism, as  a  creed,  is  the  last  subterfuge  by  which  the 
human  mind,  instead  of  succumbing  to  the  ills  of  liie 
by  suicide,  madness  or  recklessness,  escapes  from  the 
galling  pressure  of  fatality.  It  is  true  that  the 
pessimist  must  then  affirm,  like  Schopenhauer,  that 
all  the  consolations  of  life  are  purely  negative,  and 
that  in  turning  to  art,  or  religion,  or  philosophy,  or 
science,  he  is  only  exercising  the  hard- won  faculty  of 
escaping,  by  means  of  an  *'  objective  interest  in 
things,**  from  real  experience.  But  man,  as  Goethe 
said,  *' never  knows  how  anthropomorphic  he  is.** 
He  can  never  secure  his  conception  of  nirvana,  of 
heaven,  of  God,  of  beauty,  or  of  holiness  from  some 
admixture  of  the  hopes  and  sympathies  which  he  may 


94  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

have     dreamed     of     renouncing.       The     pessimistic 
idealist  is  likely  enough  to  return  from  his  contempla- 
tions with  some   **  gospel  "  or  philosophy  addressed 
to  his  fellowmen,  in  which  lurk  perhaps  all  the  old 
seeds  of  infatuation.     In  the  pessimist's  affirmation  of 
the     ideal,     Nietzsche     mockingly     detects     the     last 
resource    of    hypocritical    weakness.         He    resolves, 
then,  at  the  point  where  all  the  hopes  and  illusions  of 
chagrined   egoism   find   themselves  foiled,   to  declare 
himself  optimist — a  lover  of  fate,  or  a   '*  yea-saying 
man."     He   denies    **  the   ideal."     More   courageous 
and  more  honest  than  Schopenhauer,  he  returns  from 
the  dread  region  of  ultimate  self-questioning  with  no 
deceptive  doctrine  of  resignation,  or  altruism,  or  con- 
templation— seed-grounds  of  hypocrisy  and  illusion — 
but    with    the    frank    and    **  gay "    denial    of    God, 
freedom,  immortality,  and,  at  the  same  time,  with  the 
equally  frank  and  gay  avowal  of  the  will-to-live,  the 
desire  of  power,  strength,   and  activity.     But  has  he 
reckoned   with   the   narrow   limits   of    that   power   in 
which    he    has   learned    to    exult,    the    limitations    of 
experience,  from  which  pessimism  has  found  in  art, 
contemplation,  resignation,  the  only  permitted  outlets? 
He  returns,  at  all  events,  with  this  augmentation  and 
ratification  of  the  sentiment  of  power,  that  it  disowns 
all    **  idealistic "    restrictions.       He    has    acquired    a 
caustic  perception  of  the  figmentitious  nature  of  those 
conceptions   which   it   suits   alike   the   interest  of   the 
strong  and  the  poltroonery  of  the  weak  to  regard  as 
moral  distinctions,  transcendental  or  divine,  inherent 
in  human  nature.     Nietzsche  stands  or  falls  with  his 
assertion  that  moral  distinctions  are  not  superhuman 
or   superimposed   (transcendental)   checks   and   ingre- 


WAY  OF  UNDERSTANDING  NIETZCHE  9S 
dients  of  human  conduct,  but  the  creation,  subject  to 
continual  transformation  from  the  same  source,  of 
humanity  itself.  The  spectacle  of  **  the  moral  law  " 
awakens  in  him,  not  as  it  did  in  Ksuit,  such  a  feelingr 
as  the  spectacle  of  the  stars  awakens,  of  eternal  and 
supernormal  elements  present  in  every-day  experience, 
yet  a  certain  judicious  respect  as  the  monument  of 
earlier  ages  in  which  man  acted  in  his  true  role  as  a 
"'creator  of  values."  In  the  sense  that  *'  language  is 
fossil  poetry "  :  or  in  the  sense  that  philology, 
according  to  the  passage  already  quoted,  evokes  the 
forms  of  a  more  fortunate  past ;  so  the  morality  which 
men  accept  as  **  slaves  "  points  back  to  the  creative 
power  of  *'  masters  "  who  imposed  it  (as  Nietzsche 
conceives,  for  their  own  ends). 

In  the  family,  for  instance,  parents  will  impose  a 
slave-morality  :  **  You  mustn*t  do  that !"  Impatience, 
expediency,  not  to  speak  of  a  lack  of  metaphysical 
acumen,  will  dictate  this  hasty  method  of  tabooing 
certain  actions  as  in  themselves  **  bad.**  And  it  is  so 
that  conventional  morality  and  religion  treat  the 
parents  themselves.  Indeed  it  is  only  by  a  flash  of 
intuition,  with  some  elements  of  **  wickedness,'*  that 
in  later  life  we  occasionally  transcend  the  moral 
casuistry  of  the  Sunday  School.  Take,  for  example, 
public  charity.  The  poor  would  fare  far  better  at  our 
hands  were  it  not  for  that  moral  philosophy  which 
at  once  puts  up  our  backs  by  inculcating  the  practice 
as  a  duty.  We  refuse  charity  in  the  streets  because 
we  do  not  like  the  smack  of  self-satisfaction  consequent 
on  the  performance  of  an  action  which  is  reputed  to 
be  virtuous.  But  if  it  were  simply  understood  that 
we  can  do  what  we  like  with  our  own  money   we 


96  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

should  relieve  many  a  poor  applicant  simply  out  of 
a  sense  of  freedom,  or  according  to  that  maxim  of 
**  noble  "  as  contrasted  with  *'  slave  *'  morality,  which 
Nietzsche  might  have  said  had  lost  its  way  among  the 
early  Christians,  **  It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to 
receive."  Or  take  the  habit  of  telling  lies.  It  is  a 
matter  of  expediency  to  whip  little  boys  out  of  such  a 
habit,  and  to  impute  it  as  an  offence  in  the  mentally 
undeveloped ;  yet  who  can  doubt  that  a  punctiliousness 
about  telling  the  truth  is  mainly  an  affair  of  personal 
pride,  and  strongest  where  it  is  purely  voluntary. 
But  the  "noble,"  who  are  voluntarily  truthful  among 
themselves,  will  enjorce  the  practice  on  their  vassals. 
The  "power,"  then,  which  Nietzsche  cares  about  is 
the  power  to  preside  at  the  origin  of  those  conceptions 
^which  direct  and  control  men.  We  have  to  bear  this 
in  mind  in  order  to  account  for  an  apparent  incon- 
sistency in  the  writings  of  Nietzsche,  who,  while 
praising  power  wherever  he  sees  it  exercised  in 
liistory  purely  from  the  love  of  it,  is  clearly  always  on 
the  side  of  those  who  confront  the  might  of  the  world 
with  the  might  of  the  idea,  and  for  whom  some 
limitation  of  circumstance  or  character  has  been  a 
"school  of  genius."  When  he  praises  deliberately 
"  bad  "  men,  such  as  the  mythical  Machiavelli  or 
Caesar  Borgia,  he  is  praising  men  who  dealt  with  the 
crowd  in  the  spirit  of  "  masters,"  though  only  after 
its  own  moral  values;  he  is  praising  them  at  the 
expense  of  merely  "  good  "  men,  with  whom  some 
sense  of  "  acquiring  merit "  by  their  actions  is 
inseparable  from  the  habit  of  regarding  actions  as  in 
themselves  good  or  evil. 

But  what  becomes  of  those   '*  laws  which  in  the 


WAY  OF  UNDERSTANDING  NIETZCHE  97 
highest  empyrean  had  their  birth,"  of  which  Sophocles 
sang  even  in  that  Greek  world  which  philology  evoked 
for  Nietzsche?  How  was  it,  indeed,  that  the  Greeks 
and  Romans,  whose  '*  immoralism "  Nietzsche  is 
never  tired  of  praising,  were  far  less  afraid  than  we 
are  of  the  suspicion  of  having  the  tongue  in  the  cheek 
when  they  talked  of  virtue  said  morality,  and  used 
these  words  far  more  freely  than  we  do?  They 
believed  in  good  and  evil  just  as  much  as  we  do,  but 
in  calling  a  man  good  or  bad  they  regarded  the  whole 
ensemble  of  his  character  and  circumstances  more 
liberally,  if  not  quite  as  fastidiously  as  we.  Plutarch's 
heroes  do  not  in  general  perform  particularly  '*  good  " 
actions,  yet  his  biographies  leave  the  impression  of 
goodness  or  badness,  or  rather  of  moral  strength  or 
weakness.  In  regard  to  morals,  Nietzsche  is  (by 
continual  effort)  one  of  the  ancients  :  and  though  his 
attitude  towards  the  struggle  of  the  ordinary  man  with 
his  **  temptations "  can  hardly  be  described  as 
sympathetic;  though  in  fact  he  holds  his  sides  in 
unholy  merriment  at  the  spectacle  of  men  living 
deliberately  against  their  inclinations;  he  is  probably 
as  whole-hearted  as  any  moralist  in  his  belief  that  the 
devil  is  an  ass.  **  I  do  not  deny,"  he  says, — **  as 
need  hardly  be  said  if  it  be  allowed  that  I  am  in  my 
senses — that  it  is  needful  to  avoid  and  combat  many 
actions  which  are  called  immoral ;  just  as  it  is  needful 
to  perform  and  to  encourage  many  which  are  called 
moral ;  but  I  think  it  is  needful  to  do  both  the  one  and 
the  other  for  different  reasons  from  those  till  now 
acknowledged.  It  is  needful  that  we  should  change 
owf^way  oj  seeing  in  order  to  arrive,  perhaps  very  late, 
at  changing  our  way  oj  jeeling,"     Nietzsche  himself 


98  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

seems  to  see  with  the  ancients  and  to  feel  with  the 
modern  puritans  like  Emerson,  Thoreau,  Carlyle,  who 
have  arrived  at  a  **  way  of  feeling  '*  in  these  matters 
most  nearly  akin  to  that  of  the  ancients  (**  teachers 
best,"  as  Milton  calls  them,  '*  of  moral  prudence  "), 
and  who  have  regarded  man,  as  the  ancients  regarded 
him,  rather  as  having  a  will  to  exert  than  as  having 
a  soul  to  save.  In  this  way  the  ancients  maintained 
their  supremacy  as  moralists  even  after  the  appearance 
of  Christianity,  with  its  consoling  but,  as  it  seemed  to 
the  ancients,  **  immoral  "  beliefs.  Nietzsche,  as  is 
well  known,  denounced  Christianity  as  a  perversion 
by  which,  owing  to  a  combination  of  circumstances, 
**  slave  morality  "  was  enabled  to  triumph  over  the 
**  morality  of  masters."  This  antipathy  to  Christianity 
into  which  he  has  thought  himself  helps  one,  at  all 
events,  to  understand  the  attitude  of  serious  thinkers 
in  the  ancient  world  who  detected  in  the  **  forgiveness 
of  sins  "  and  the  annihilation  of  the  will,  a  lax 
morality.  And  later,  when  Europe  was  filled  with 
renunciants  and  ascetics,  paganism  was  still  able  to 
unfold  before  the  eyes  of  men  the  most  shining 
examples,  not  indeed  of  holiness,  but  of  manhood 
(virtue).  Throughout  the  middle  ages  and  under  the 
regime  of  ecclesiasticism,  virtue,  in  the  old  sense  of 
manhood,  was  almost  discredited  in  favour  of  the 
ideal  of  renunciation;  until  the  Renaissance,  with  the 
not  specially  antique  accompaniment  of  libertinism, 
brought  back  the  ancient  ideal  of  a  humanity  *'for 
perfect  action  fonned  under  laws  divine."  The 
morality  of  Shakspeare's  plays,  or  of  Browning's 
poem  *'  The  Statute  and  the  Bust,"  of  Goethe,  or  of 
Carlyle's  "  Friedrich,"  is  none  the  less  positive  and 


WAY  OF  UNDERSTANDING  NIETZCHE  99 

real  for  not  lending  itself  to  inculcation  from  the  pulpit. 

To  the  doctrine  of  the  Superman — that  **  far-off 
divine  event"  to  which,  according  to  Nietzsche, 
humanity  moves — a  consideration  of  the  **  morality  of 
slaves  and  masters  "  naturally  leads  on;  but  his  con- 
ception of  the  Superman,  moulded  chiefly  by  hatred 
of  Christianity  and  the  obsession  of  his  mind  by 
Darwinism,  is  undoubtedly  a  little  crazy.  There  is  a 
kind  of  assumption  that  those  great  me^i  who  act  as 
''bridges"  to  the  Superman  exist  at  the  expense  of 
the  rest  of  mankind.  But  the  existence  of  great  men, 
like  the  discovery  of  nature's  secrets,  brings  nothing 
but  gain  to  all  men.  A  great  man,  a  spiritually  great 
man,  is  he  who  adds  a  new  power  and  significance  to 
life.  It  is  otherwise,  to  some  extent,  with  the  Caesars 
and  Napoleons,  those  idols  of  the  average  man,  who, 
like  the  wrath  of  Achilles,  *'  bring  a  thousand  woes 
to  men,  and  send  quickly  to  Hades  mciny  strong  souls 
of  heroes,  thus  accomplishing  the  will  of  Zeus  ";  and 
Nietzsche,  with  his  insane  denial  of  idealism  and 
devotion  to  "  physiology,"  came  to  acknowledge 
greatness  only  in  such  men.  Undoubtedly  all 
civilizations  culminate  in  a  period  during  which  a 
privileged  few  appear  to  subsist  at  the  expense  of  the 
rest  of  mankind.  Refinement,  wealth,  beauty, 
learning,  leisure,  amusement,  all  these  things  are 
necessary  for  art;  but  we  must  not  therefore  conclude 
that  civilization  exists  for  the  sake  of  the  few.  As 
the  blossom  is  only  an  incident  in  the  development  of 
the  plant,  so  the  efflorescence  of  art  and  culture  is 
only  a  part  of  the  life-history  of  a  race.  Behind  this 
efflorescence,  and  eventually  displacing  it,  new  ideas 
and  tendencies  are  germinating.     How  is  it  that  the 

H 


100  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

spiritual  development  of  humanity  appears  to  obey 
laws  so  contrary  to  those  which  govern  its  physical 
evolution,  that  it  is  as  a  rule  among  the  **  despised 
and  rejected  "  that  the  princes  and  potentates  of 
thought  arise  ?  Clearly  because  it  is  on  the  unsuccess- 
ful candidates  for  natural  selection  that  the  problem  of 
existence  bears  with  its  whole  weight.  So  little  com- 
petent is  a  merely  physical  theory  like  that  of  Darwin 
to  explain  life,  that  its  chief  service  is  so  to  marshal 
facts  as  immediately  to  demonstrate  the  existence  of 
forces  which  it  leaves  out  of  account,  and  to  send  us 
back  perhaps  to  some  metaphysical  theory  like  that 
of  Hegel,  which  teaches  that  every  positive  generates 
the  negation  of  itself. 

1904. 


SINCERITY 

EWARE  of  that  man,'*  said  Diderot  of 
Rousseau;  **  he  believes  every  word  he 
says  ! ' '  We  are  reminded  by  such  a 
saying  that  sincerity,  or  the  habit  of 
throwing  the  vital  powers  into  our  words 
and  actions,  so  far  from  being  merely  the  attribute  of 
good  and  undesigning  men,  is  an  engine  of  influence 
and  innovation  within  the  compass  of  the  few.  There 
are  indeed  certain  men — Rousseau  was  one  of  them, 
and  there  is  no  doubt  a  Rousseau  in  every  man  of 
genius — who  are  born  into  the  world  to  apply  to  our 
arts  and  institutions  the  test  of  genuine  feeling.  *'I  am 
not  like  any  man  whom  I  have  ever  seen,**  said 
Rousseau;  **  I  venture  to  think  I  am  not  like  any  man 
that  ever  existed."  But  he  was  mistaken.  In  all  the 
foibles  described  by  him  so  lovingly  in  his  **  Con- 
fessions," thousands  of  readers  in  every  generation 
since  have  confessed  themselves  vicariously.  What 
was  so  exceptional  in  Rousseau  was  the  complete 
absence  in  him  of  that  power  to  adapt  himself  to  his 
environment,  a  power  which  almost  everyone 
possesses,  and  which  parents  are  perhaps  right  in 
choosing  to  encourage  in  their  children  rather  than 
genius ;  and  on  the  other  hand  the  strength  in  him  of 
that  power  whose  rarity  nature  seems  to  atone  for  by 
the  enormous  attraction  and  compulsive  force  with 
which  she  occasionally  endows  it.  From  time  to  time 
a  moment  befalls  when  the  martyrs  of  sincerity  are 


102  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

transformed  into  the  founders  of  new  eras,  and  the 
**  creators,"  to  adopt  Nietzsche's  language,  of  the 
**  new  values."  But  for  Rousseau,  if  we  may  accept 
the  testimony  of  Napoleon,  there  would  have  been  no 
French  Revolution;  and  two  centuries  earlier,  a  man 
who  had  at  first  seemed  likely  to  end  as  one  more 
obscure  victim  of  a  sincerity  sis  helpless  as  that  of 
Rousseau,  Martin  Luther,  apparently  by  a  mere  acci- 
dent, suddenly  found  on  his  side  the  suffrages  of  men,^ 
and  himself  the  honoured  father  of  the  coming  world. 

It  is  a  common  fallacy,  bequeathed  to  us  perhaps 
from  pre-Lutheran  times,  that  people  are  by  preference 
and  intention  insincere,  and  that  the  strong  man  will 
wear  a  mask,  whereas  the  truth  probably  is  that  in- 
sincerity is  almost  invariably  a  sign  of  weakness.  If 
it  were  in  our  power  to  be  sincere  we  should  no  more 
think  of  being  insincere  than  a  pleader  would  bewilder 
his  audience  with  subtleties  when  facts  were  at  his 
disposal.  The  power  of  genius  is  essentially  the  same 
as  the  disconcerting  quality  of  sincerity  when  brought 
face  to  face  with  false  pretensions.  The  rest  of  us  are 
constantly  peeling  off  new  wrappages  which  conceal 
us  from  ourselves,  eoid  finding  that  yesterday  we  acted 
a  part;  but  the  genius  is  he  who  has  arrived  at  the 
basis  of  his  nature  and  whose  morrow  belies  not  his 
yesterday.  Genius  is  that  fire  which  kindles  only  the 
altars  of  sincerity.  To  be  sincere  is  what  every  man, 
from  the  poet  to  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  finds 
his  account  in  being.  In  literature  it  is  style,  the  power 
of  leaning  one's  whole  weight  on  the  pen.  If  ever  we 
poor  pagans,  adrift  in  what  Myers  called  the  "inter- 
space between  faiths  decayed  and  faiths  re-risen,'* 
shall   devise   for   ourselves   some   consoling   ritual,    it 


SINCERITY  103 

ought  to  be  one  which  should  recall  us,  were  it  only 
one  day  in  the  week,  to  spiritual  nakedness  and  self- 
realization.  Meanwhile,  to  have  confided  oneself 
even  to  paper  brings  relief  and  peace,  as  only  those 
actions  do  which  have  the  sanction  of  heart,  soul  and 
intellect.  If  we  could  believe  that  a  certain  number 
of  those  actions  in  trade,  politics  and  social  life,  which 
make  up  the  world's  doings  for  a  day,  were  done  with 
the  whole-heartedness  with  which,  in  a  lonely  country 
road,  one  makes  an  entry  in  one's  note-book,  we  might 
believe  in  the  '*  progress  of  civilisation,"  and  that  the 
world  was  going  excellently  well;  but  it  is  only  those 
who  have  no  plans  and  no  schemes,  and  perhaps  even 
not  too  much  brains,  who  can  afford  to  act  and  speak 
only  from  conviction.  Verily  we  need  a  brood  of  fakirs 
and  eremites,  with  souls  uncompromisingly  exclusive 
of  the  otiose  and  insincere;  poets  whose  poverty  in 
mere  opinion  perhaps  excludes  them  from  society,  but 
whose  rare  thoughts  have  the  beauty  and  finality  of 
wayside  flowers. 

Most  people  have  at  one  time  or  another  had  the 
dream  of  how  good  a  thing  it  would  be  to  say  and  do 
nothing  except  with  sincerity;  to  say  **  Thank  you'* 
and  *'  Good  morning  "  only  when  you  mean  it,  to 
laugh  only  when  amused,  to  listen  only  when  in- 
terested, etc.  So  resolute  an  attempt,  however,  to 
simplify  life,  very  soon  breaks  down.  To  begin  with, 
we  ourselves  have  a  dozen  different  sincerities,  a 
sincerity  of  ill-humour,  of  jollity,  of  cynicism,  of  mis- 
understanding, to  mention  some  of  the  less  worthy 
kind;  and  are  we  to  inflict  our  moods  on  our  neigh- 
bours? Besides,  it  is  only  with  the  sincere  that  sin- 
cerity is  possible ;  and  as  the  greater  number  of  those 


104  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

with  whom  the  day's  doings  bring  us  into  contact  have 
not  attained  sincerity,  we  must  trim  our  course  as  we 
may  among  conflicting  moods.  If  it  is  rare  that  we 
are  sincere  even  with  ourselves,  it  is  rarer  still  for  two 
persons  to  be  simultaneously  and  mutually  sincere. 
Sincerity  is  attained  for  the  most  part  in  solitude,  but 
even  there  it  is  to  be  feared  the  necessity  of  incon- 
stancy and  variety  pursues  us.  If  we  felt  the  force  of 
those  intuitions  which  visit  us  so  absolutely  as  to  feel 
them  always,  we  should  hardly  get  through  life.  We 
cannot  afford  to  be  too  sincere.  Who  has  not  felt,  for 
example,  at  certain  times  that  existence  itself  is  some- 
thing to  feel  ashamed  of,  and  perhaps  even  said 
heartily  with  Sophocles,  '*  Not  to  have  been  born  is 
past  utterance  the  best."  Yet  to  feel  this  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  ideals  of  stoicism,  of  epicureanism,  of 
scepticism,  of  religion,  which  in  their  different  ways 
enable  us  to  live,  was  impossible  not  only  for 
Sophocles,  who  was  most  likely,  like  Shakespeare  and 
Goethe,  a  man  of  a  cheerful  and  hopeful  disposition, 
but  for  human  nature.  The  excuse,  if  one  is  needed, 
for  this  inconstancy  to  our  deepest  intuitions  is  that  we 
are  something  in  ourselves,  independently  of  all  the 
truths  we  visit  as  a  bee  the  flower.  In  reply  to  that 
naive  inquiry,  *'  What  do  you  believe?"  one  can  only 
say.  This  and  that !  I  can  no  more  tell  what  I  believe 
than  I  can  tell  what  the  universe  believes.  The  chief 
event  of  each  day  should  be  a  fresh  discovery  of  what 
one  believes,  and  every  mood  has  its  own  creed. 
People  sometimes  talk  as  though  a  creed,  capable  of 
weekly  recitation,  were  an  essential  part  of  the  equip- 
ment of  life,  but  really  it  is  surprising  how  well  one  can 
get  along  without  a  creed.     As  the  Indian  scripture 


SINCERITY  105 

says,  **  Drinking  of  the  pleasant  beverage  called  the 
perception  of  truth,  one  becomes  free  from  excitement 
and  sin." 

It  is  contended  that  science  and  religion  are  not 
necessarily  opposed,  yet  it  is  hardly  to  be  denied  that 
Scio  has  ascended  the  throne  of  Credo,  who  sits  as  a 
kind  of  dowager-empress,  wearing  the  insignia  of 
former  greatness,  and  even  insisting  on  precedence, 
yet  yielding  all  her  real  authority  to  her  successor. 
What  we  **  believe  '*  has  not  the  value  of  what  we 
know;  what  we  have  heard  from  another  we  say  we 
believe,  but  what  we  have  found  out  for  ourselves  we 
know.  For  a  long  time  humanity,  having  quite  in- 
sufficient notions  of  the  phenomena  of  external  and  of 
human  nature,  of  the  stars  and  the  earth  and  the  cause 
of  thunder,  formed  the  habit  of  distinguishing 
between  the  truth  of  faith  and  the  truth  of  knowledge. 
It  must,  however,  be  admitted  that  the  notion  of  faith 
as  a  special  organ  of  the  humsm  mind  is  not  one 
which  bears  examination  now.  The  disappearance 
of  faith  simply  means  that  the  mind  is  now  called 
upon  to  verify  things  for  itself,  and  to  bring  them 
within  the  range  of  knowledge.  In  regard  to  a 
difficult  and  involved  subject,  for  example,  like  the 
origins  of  Christianity,  in  which  certainty  is  so  difficult 
to  arrive  at,  but  in  which  the  well-disposed  are  not  to 
be  satisfied  with  the  mere  criticism  of  commonsense 
or  with  denial,  a  kind  of  tacit  or  provisional  assent  is 
adopted  by  minds  unable  or  too  indolent  to  enter  on 
a  general  examination  of  the  evidence  bequeathed  to 
us;  hat  it  is  quite  certain  that  those  who  do  not 
c^ttempt  such  research  are  at  the  mercy  of  those  who 
arrive  at  their  own  conclusions  in  doing  so.     As  we 


106  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

study  an  age  like  the  fourth  century,  and  gradually 
gain  clear  ideas  of  its  various  tendencies,  conviction 
inevitably  rises  in  the  mind  as  to  the  nature  of  historic 
Christianity  and  the  claims  made  for  it.  Such  a  study 
may  lead  to  very  different  conclusions  in  different 
minds — that  is  a  question  of  temperament  or  the  will 
to  believe — but  certainty,  whether  in  affirmation  or 
denial,  is  only  to  be  gained  by  resolute  inquiry. 

The  New  Testament  is  generally  allowed  to  exhibit 
a  great  advance  on  the  Old  in  respect  of  the  suppres- 
sion of  that  hatred  of  one's  enemies  so  candidly 
avowed  by  David  in  his  Psalms.  But  to  love  one's 
enemies  is  a  different  thing  from  making  friends  with 
everybody,  a  thing  impossible.  There  are  persons 
unfortunately  to  whom  our  true  relationship  is  one  of 
enmity.  We  can  persuade  ourselves  that  we  love  our 
enemy,  or  rather,  out  of  consideration  for  ourselves, 
we  refrain  from  breaking  through  that  thin  medium 
of  general  good  will  in  which  we  confound  our  enemy 
with  our  friends,  until  destiny,  in  some  malign  hour, 
throws  us  into  some  situation  in  which  we  rub 
shoulders  with  him  all  day  long,  and  we  discover  that 
the  laws  of  incompatibility  of  temperament  are  not  to 
be  eluded  by  any  counsel  of  perfection.  To  love  each 
man  is  doubtless  the  goal  to  aim  at,  but  until  love, 
hatred  !  To  pray  for  the  discomfiture  of  our  enemies 
indicates  a  frame  of  mind  far  more  likely  to  succeed 
in  bringing  about  an  ultimate  rapprochement  than  to 
acquiesce  in  the  continuance  of  a  mutual  toleration  in 
which  our  attitude  towards  mankind  at  large, 
generally  egoistic,  is  not  particularised  into  a  personal 
relationship.     Perhaps  when  our  enemy  is  discomfited 


SINCERITY  107 

and  punished  as  we  believe  he  deserves,  we  shall  find 
him  tractable  and  accessible,  a  man  whom  one  can 
love.  What  each  man  really  is,  is  disguised  from  us 
in  most  cases  by  circumstances  which  preclude  a 
genuine  contact  with,  him  at  any  point,  and  to  upset 
these  false  relations  and  substitute  true  ones,  the  lever 
of  hatred  may  be  meanwhile  necessary.  On  the 
whole,  next  to  love,  this  hatred  is  the  highest  com- 
pliment which  we  can  pay  to  our  neighbour,  and  the 
most  promising  of  a  happy  eventuation.  A  lover 
will  not  hear  of  any  sentiment  between  love  and 
hatred  from  his  mistress,  and  we  see  that  mortal 
enemies,  when  brought  face  to  face  in  a  duel,  are 
willing  to  die  to  give  each  other  ''satisfaction."  In 
the  pure  ether  of  the  inmost  consciousness,  the  region 
in  which  the  Gospels  call  upon  us  to  live,  where 
identity  is  perceived,  we  may  love  our  neighbour 
truly  as  ourselves ;  to  meet  him  at  all  in  that  region  is 
to  love  him  as  ourselves.  But  to  love  the  man  whose 
true  personality  we  cannot  reach  because  of  the 
circumstances  which  make  him  our  obstacle,  it  is 
needful  to  break  down  those  barriers  first. 

A  certain  confusion  of  thought  seems  to  vitiate 
those  schemes  for  the  abolition  of  war,  etc.,  which 
seem  to  suggest  that  nations  should  be  governed  in 
their  conduct  towards  one  another  by  principles 
derived  from  what  the  Quakers  called  the  '*  inner 
hght."  Nations,  however,  have  a  sincerity  of  their 
own  in  their  dealings  with  one  another  which  states- 
men understand.  They  live,  as  the  jurists  of  the 
seventeenth  century  taught,  in  a  "  state  of  nature  " 
rather  than  as  individuals  composing  a  society,   and 


108  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

we  delegate  to  governments  the  duty  of  maintaining 
our   safety   auid    securing   our   interests   after   a   code 
which      we      might     otherwise      have      to      practise 
individually,     but     which     we     have     discarded     as 
members  of  society.     Neither  Laotze  nor  Socrates  nor 
Jesus     interfered     with     this     code,     or     denied     the 
necessary  authority  of  the  State,  which  on  condition  of 
our  readiness  to  sacrifice  our  lives  for  it  when  it  is 
assailed,  takes  upon  its  own  shoulders  the  disgraceful 
struggle  for  existence.       They  limited  themselves  to 
the  demonstration  that  the  true  interests  of  men  in 
every  State  are  identical.     The  use  of  terms  and  of 
ideals,  which  have  reference  originally  to  the  relation 
of  man  to  his  neighbour,  have  an  air  of  unreality  and 
cant  when  applied,  as  they  are  nowadays  by  some  of 
our  publicists,  to  the  relation  of  these  Titanic  beings 
towEurds  one  another,  whose  normal  relations  of  formal 
courtesy    and    watchful    neutrality    represent    a   great 
refinement    in    the    conditions    of    the    struggle    for 
existence,  insomuch  that  we  scarcely  realise  at  times 
that   the  struggle   still   goes   on,   or   why   the  nations 
should  not  live  together  according  to  the  maxims  of 
the    Sermon    on    the    Mount.        Yet   to    talk   of    love 
between  nations  is  merely  a  capitulation  to  the  news- 
papers.       So    long    as    their   part   is    simply    to   look 
after    our    interests    there    may    be    honourable    and 
prudent    dealings    in    their   mutual    rivalries,    but   not 
love,  which  begins  with  renunciation;  and  were  the 
nations  empowered  to  practise  this  they  might  vanish, 
their    task    accomplished.        A    sincere   and    regretful 
admission  that  civilisation  is  but  a  refinement  of  the 
struggle  for  life,   and   that  the  cause  of  sociaJ  well- 


SINCERITY  109 

being  is  distinct  from  the  fact  of  personal  salvation, 
and  even  perhaps  the  private  and  inevitable  foe  of  the 
latter,  might  if  it  were  general  be  the  most  effective 
deterrent  from  war,  inasmuch  as  mankind  would  then 
be  less  likely  to  be  led  by  specious  phrases  into 
unforseen  calamities. 

1904 


REAFFORESTATION. 

**  Here  are  trees — let  tis  think  the  matter  outV — Buddha. 

JF  the  vegetable  world,  as  man  of  the  animal 
world,  the  tree  is  the  perfect  type  and 
development :  and  hence  it  is  that  when 
man  is  thoroughly  at  peace  with  himself, 
prosperous  and  flourishing,  there  is 
nothing  that  we  compare  him  with  so  instinctively  as 
a  tree.  *'  He  shall  be  like  a  tree  planted  by  the 
rivers  of  water,  that  bringeth  forth  its  fruit  in  its 
season,  whose  leaf  also  shall  not  wither;  and  whatso- 
ever he  doeth  shall  prosper."  "Man  is  indeed 
described  by  a  tree  in  the  Word,*'  says  Swedenborg, 
**  and  his  wisdom  from  love  by  a  garden;  nothing  else 
is  signified  by  the  Garden  of  Eden."  In  the  tree  the 
passive  ideal  of  existence  is  realised,  the  vegetative 
ideal;  and  though  the  limitations  of  that  ideal  were 
destined  to  be  demonstrated  when  the  notion  of  an 
axe  flew  to  the  brain  of  the  latest  uncouth-looking 
mammal,  there  were  entire  ages  during  which  the 
true  type  of  attainment  was  still  the  tree,  and  not  in 
any  of  the  apparently  aimless  activities  of  those 
animals  who  crashed  or  climbed  or  slunk  through  the 
forest,  or  lodged  in  its  branches.  Providence,  how- 
ever, had  some  other  end  in  view,  as  it  appeared, 
with  this  planet  than  the  realisation  upon  its  surface  of 
the  vegetative  ideal  :  201  end  which  has  been  perhaps 


REAFFORESTATION  1 1 1 

too  boldly  defined  by  the  Swedish  seer  as  the 
''production  of  a  heaven  from  the  human  race."^ 
However  that  may  be,  it  is  in  man — **  earth's  thought- 
ful lord,*'  as  Wordsworth  sings  him;  "for  perfect 
action  formed  under  laws  divine,"  as  Whitman 
proclaims  him — that  the  purpose  of  creation,  so  far 
as  we  have  knowledge,  appears  to  be  concentrated. 
He  has  even  begun  to  dream  of  himself  as  the  medium 
through  which  the  creative  purpose  of  the  universe 
shall  manifest  itself  further;  and  only  a  little  while 
ago  a  professor  of  philology  in  Germany  threw  up  his 
chair  and  retired  into  the  Alps  in  order  to  proclaim 
to  the  world  his  doctrine  of  the  Supermian,  according 
to  which  man  himself  assumes  within  certain  limits 
the  role  of  creator.  Nietzsche,  however,  was  a  mere 
poet,  and  more  anthropomorphic  than  any  of  the 
Hebrews  whom  he  vituperated.  As  if,  after  barely  a 
million  years  of  existence,  and  a  few  hundreds  of 
more  or  less  uninterrupted  and  conscious  social 
development,  it  were  yet  time  to  begin  to  think  of  the 
next  stage  of  evolution !  The  Superman  was  perhaps 
really  nothing  more  (or  less)  than  a  personification  of 
the  State,  an  entity  which  has  been  created  not  so 
much  by  us  as  in  spite  of  ourselves  by  our  necessities, 
and  has  only  in  our  own  time  begun  to  acquire  self- 
consciousness  and  self -direction.  It  is  true  that 
Nietzsche  vituperated  the  State  as  the  **  coldest  of  cold 
monsters  " ;  but  it  is  only  in  the  State  that  the  **  great 
man  mankind  "  attains  to  some  of  those  superhuman 
attributes  with  which  Nietzsche  endowed  his 
Superman,  and  the  Statesman  who  best  interprets  the 
collective  will  of  mankind  is  perhaps  the  nearest  thing 
to  him  that  it  is  permissible  to  hope  for. 


112  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

The  State  is,  in  fact,  a  cosmic  agent,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  its  part  to  restore  the  balance  of  nature  where  that 
hats  been  upset  by  the  reckless  behaviour  of  man  in 
the  past :  to  determine,  for  example,  what  portions  of 
the  earth's  surface  it  can  now  afford  to  set  apart  for 
the  ancient  races  of  the  trees.  Yet  in  looking  to  the 
State,  £ts  to  a  new  Providence,  for  the  solution  of  all 
our  problems,  we  are  perhaps  only  giving  time  for 
causal  energies  to  mature  which  lie  altogether  outside 
the  range  of  state-interference.  What  is  known  as 
the  problem  of  rural  life,  for  instance — at  which  the 
State  has  recently  begun  to  tinker — awaits  for  its 
solution  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  new  way  of 
looking  at  things,  a  new  idea,  which  may  arise  Heaven 
knows  how,  and  may  change  the  face  of  society  at 
any  time.  For  a  long  time  to  come  we  may  expect 
that  society  will  fall  into  two  main  parties  or  divisions, 
l>oth  looking  to  the  State  for  their  sanction,  one  acting 
in  its  name  to  secure  revolutionary  adaptations  of 
society  to  the  pressure  of  its  difficulties,  the  other 
regsurding  its  own  cause  as  nothing  less  than  that  of 
the  maintenance  of  civilisation,  and  succeeding 
periodically  in  arresting  the  precipitation  towards 
anarchy.  And  nature — human  nature — will  find  in 
neither  of  these  parties,  nor  in  both  together,  the 
plasticity  and  spontaneity  required  for  the  moulding 
of  the  future  of  msui;  it  \vill  rather  find  these  in  a 
third  class  which  will  meanwhile  have  arisen,  con- 
sisting in  the  first  case  of  those  who  have  fallen  away 
irom  social  effort  and  public  ambition,  the  **  intellec- 
tuals "  as  we  call  them  at  present,  the  **  incom- 
petents," and  the  increasing  number  of  those  who 
are     appealed     to     by     the     ideal     of     self-culture. 


REAFFORESTATION  1 1 3 

contemplation,  and  even  asceticism.  It  is  amongst 
these  that  a  new  idea  might  conceivably  arise  which 
might  even  lead  ultimately  to  a  new  form  of  civilisa- 
tion. It  is  hard  to  say,  for  example,  what  influence 
the  appearance  of  an  English-speaking  Tolstoi  might 
not  have  in  peopling  the  derelict  country  with  small 
holdings,  inhabited  no  longer  by  peasantry — a  class 
w^hich  the  whole  modem  system  of  things  is  tending 
to  abolish — but  by  those  to  whom  the  prizes  of  civil 
life  no  longer  presents  an  overpowering  attraction, 
and  to  whom,  on  the  other  hand,  nature  calls.  It  is 
an  idea  for  which  we  wait.  Without  an  idea  man 
is  frivolous,  anarchic,  dissatisfied,  despicable.  With 
an  idea,  the  long-hoarded  initiatives  of  his  nature  are 
liberated,  he  strains  forward  to  new  consummations, 
he  **  did  not  know  that  he  contained  so  much  virtue." 
**  They  reckon  ill  who  leave  Me  out,**  says  Brahma 
in  Emerson's  poem  :  and  the  saying  may  be  applied 
to  the  **  anticipations  "  of  sociologists  like  Mr.  H.  G. 
Wells,  which  leave  out  of  account  the  possible  effects 
on  the  whole  structure  of  society  of  the  renewal  in 
mankind  of  a  disposition  for  spiritual  adventure  :  a 
change  which  would  make  any  prizes  which  society 
has  to  offer  to  the  better  sort  of  individuals  as  nothing 
compared  with  such  rewards  as  Buddha  offered  in 
Emancipation,  or  Jesus  Christ  in  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  He  must  be  very  dogmatic  or  unimaginative 
who  would  affirm  that  man  will  never  weary  of  the 
whole  system  of  things  which  reigns  at  present :  of 
respectability  and  security,  of  eight  hours  of  work  and 
cards  in  the  evening,  of  shops,  professions,  motors 
and  newspapers,  of  household-life  and  the  sacrifice  of 
his  natural  love  of  liberty  to  the  requirements  of  town- 


1 1 4  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

loving  woman,  of  churches  and  theatres.  We  never 
know  how  near  we  are  to  the  end  of  any  phase  of 
our  experience,  smd  often  when  its  seeming  stabiUty 
begins  to  pall  upon  us,  it  is  a  sign  that  things  are 
about  to  take  a  new  turn.  Man,  aifter  all,  is  still  man, 
the  same  being  who  flung  himself  into  the  wars  of 
religion  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
who  departed  on  the  Crusades,  who  peopled  the 
deserts  of  Egypt  and  the  East,  the  forests  of  Germany 
and  the  isles,  with  hermits;  and  there  is  no  reason,, 
should  the  idea  of  doing  so  enter  into  his  head,  that 
he  should  not  try  some  new  experiment.  There  is 
nothing  of  which  we  should  be  less  disposed  to  say 
that  it  cannot  happen,  than  that  such  an  idea  should 
not  at  some  unexpected  moment  occur  to  him.  Man- 
kind, in  fact,  is  always  acting  impulsively  on  an  idea 
of  some  sort.  About  a  century  ago,  for  instance,  it 
took  to  scooping  out  the  coal-measures,  the  formation 
of  which  occupied  nature  for  millions  of  years,  and 
already  it  has  almost  come  within  sight  of  their 
exhaustion — and  all  for  what?  Chiefly  because  the 
idea  of  Speed  had  taken  possession  of  it,  the  apparently 
unassailable  ideal  of  expediting  work  and  locomotion 
indefinitely.  A  man  does  not  particularly  enjoy 
ripping  through  mountains  in  an  express-train  or 
tearing  along  tarred  roads  in  a  motor,  but  it  is  an  idea, 
and  one  of  which  he  may  weary  any  day.  The 
imbroglio  of  labour  and  capital,  and  the  first  symptoms 
of  a  disconcerting  but  not  really  irrational  **  revolt  of 
woman,"  are  perhaps,  at  the  moment  of  writing,  the 
outstanding  results  of  his  devotion  to  this  idea. 
Probably  when  he  changes  it  for  some  other,  the  trees, 
which  during  his  obsession  by  this  idea  have  been 


REAFFORESTATION  1 1 5 

threatened  with  extermination,  may  steal  down  upon 
the  plains  again,  to  his  advantage  in  every  way. 
What  if  the  ideal  of  Leisure  were  to  succeed  that  of 
Speed  ?  If  we  rightly  apprehend  Hegel's  theory  of  an 
inherent  logic  in  historic  development,  we  might 
almost  use  his  authority  in  predicting  that  it  will.  Of 
course  we  must  expect  that  the  generality  of  men  will 
overdo  this  ideal,  just  as  they  have  overdone  it  in 
India  and  the  East,  and  just  as  they  have  overdone 
Speed  in  Europe  and  America  :  but  its  adoption  might 
be  attended  with  one  advantage,  which  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  attended  devotion  to  Speed :  the 
highest  type  of  human  being  might  be  brought  out 
once  again  as  in  certain  epochs  of  the  past,  the  sage, 
the  man  like  unto  a  tree  planted  by  the  rivers  of  water. 
The  outlook  therefore,  we  consider,  is  not  without 
hope;  nor  are  we  discouraged  in  contemplating  the 
growing  numbers  of  young  men  who  have  been  sent 
to  the  universities  in  order  to  become  lawyers,  doctors, 
clergymen,  engineers,  etc.,  and  have  lost  their 
vocation  by  the  way,  inbibing  perhaps,  to  the  despair 
of  their  parents  and  guardians,  irrelevant  notions  of 
self -culture  from  Goethe,  the  itch  of  authorship  from 
Emerson  and  Carlyle,  vagabond  propensities  from 
Whitman  or  Stevenson,  insubordination  from 
Nietzsche  or  Shaw,  Christianity  from  Tolstoi,  indeter- 
minate literary  aestheticism  from  W.  B.  Yeats,  etc., 
all  according  to  their  various  temperaments.  It  can- 
not be  said  that  our  universities  are  directly  responsible 
for  this  result,  whether  good  or  bad,  of  their  training  : 
on  the  contrary,  mundane  success  of  one  kind  or 
another  is  their  ideal,  and  when  by  some  chance  one 
of  these  young  ne'er-do-wells,  matriculating  in  the 
I 


116  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

vast  university  of  life,  attains  eventually  to  honours, 
the  old  time-serving  alma  mater  will  consider  it  her 
special  privilege  to  bind  his  laurels  about  his  brows. 
The  most  flagrant  instance  of  this  is  perhaps  the  case 
of  poor  Goldsmith,  whose  monument  now  **  welcomes 
the  coming,  speeds  the  parting  guest,"  Trmity  College 
claiming  to  have  **  produced"  him.  But  in  what 
sense  did  Trinity  College  produce  Goldwnith?  Did 
she  discover  beneath  his  pock-marked  exterior  the 
graK:eful  and  enfranchised  spirit  whose  mission  it  was 
to  instruct  the  great  British  public  in  the  art  of 
expression  for  more  than  a  generation?  Did  he  feel 
in  his  wanderings  through  this  world  of  care  that  her 
eye  was  upon  him,  or  did  her  Macte  Virtu te  sound 
gratefulh'  in  his  ears  when  he  gained  his  first 
successes?  No,  the  ideal  of  Trinity  College  is,  of 
necessity,  the  successful  professional  man,  not  the 
poet,  not  the  thinker;  and  it  would  be  a  mistake  to 
infer  from  the  situation  of  Foley's  fine  monument  that 
a  beautiful  maternal  relationship  exists  between  these 
old  seats  of  learning  and  mundanity,  and  their 
prodigal  sons.  A  little  rage  at  the  recollection  of 
Smiglesius  and  Burgersdicius  (fifty  years  before 
Goldsmith,  Jonathan  Swift  had  been  **  esteemed  a 
blockhead  "  for  his  inability  to  read  these  authors, 
**  they  were  so  stupid "),  and  some  memories  of 
cruelty  and  snobbery  which  rankled  in  him  throughout 
his  life,  were  all  that  Golds. nith  carried  away  with 
him  when  he  passed  through  the  gateway  of  Trinity 
for  the  last  time.  Yet  we  are  far  from  suggesting  that 
it  is  not  the  main  function  of  a  university  to  turn  out 
as  many  good  citizens  as  it  can,  or  that  she  should 
maintain  any  other  than  a  resolutely  and  even  sternly 


REAFFORESTATION  1 1 7 

mundane  attitude  toward  her  young  idealists : 
Newman,  who  came  over  here  in  the  middle  of  last 
century  (thinking,  like  others  of  his  countrymen,  that 
Ireland  was  a  country  where  ideas  grew  wild  !)  had 
regretfully  to  acknowledge  that  this  was  so,  and  to 
abandon  his  project  of  starting  a  university  with  God 
for  its  central  idea.  And  still  less  should  we  fail  to 
acknowledge  that  universities  may  now  and  then 
retain  among  their  teachers  one  as  different  as  possible 
from  Theaker  Wilder. 

Have  we  wandered  from  the  subject  of  Reafforesta- 
tion? Not  perhaps  so  very  far.  We  are  in  quest  of 
the  tree-like  man,  whom  our  civilisation  has  hitherto 
failed  to  produce,  nor  does  it  appear  that  the  seed  of 
him  is  sown  in  those  **  sacred  nurseries  of  blooming 
youth,"  our  universities.  According  to  the  old 
Indian  custom,  the  time  of  thought,  reflection, 
discipline,  cultivation  of  the  higher  powers,  education, 
in  fact,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term,  came  at  the  end 
of  life,  when  a  man  had  fulfilled  his  part  as  a  house- 
holder, and  presumably  had  lost  a  too  distracting 
appetite  for  the  pleasures  of  life.  With  us,  on  the 
contrary,  the  time  of  education  is  placed  at  the  outset 
of  life,  at  that  period  in  which  a  man  is  probably 
least  amenable  to  real  instruction,  the  period  at  which 
almost  any  man  looking  back  upon  himself  will 
acknowledge  himself  to  have  been  a  young  puppy. 
At  the  time  when  the  Indian  was  about  to  enter  upon 
the  more  serious  and  interesting  part  of  his  life,  and 
teheld — as  a  man  travelling  to  the  sea  may  behold 
from  afar  the  distant  port  from  which  he  is  to  embark 
— the  forest  hermitage  in  which  he  was  to  make  ready 
for  a  new  incarnation,  our  citizen,  bothered  orobably 


1 1 8  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

by  a  clamorous  brood  of  sons  and  daughters,  is 
beginning  to  wonder  whether  it  is  worth  his  while  to 
give  them  an  education  which  meant  so  little  to 
himself  :  looking  cheerlessly  round  on  the  waste  places 
of  his  spirit,  of  no  economic  account  in  the  present 
system  of  things.  It  is  these  waste  spaces  of  the 
human  mind  that  its  reafForesters,  our  poets  and 
thinkers,   must  learn  how  to  utilize. 

1912. 


A  CAUSE 

JHEN,  during  the  Renascence  and  the 
Reformation,  it  began  to  be  more  and 
more  impossible,  or  at  all  events  more 
and  more  unnecessary,  for  a  man  in 
whom  stirred  the  progressive  spirit  of  the 
race  to  remain  within  the  Church,  the  scholar,  the 
political  theorist,  the  philosopher,  the  poet,  and  even 
the  saint,  coming  forth  into  the  world,  soon  set  up 
standards  of  excellence  and  perfection  superior  to 
those  currently  acknowledged  within  the  fold. 
Protestantism  was  essentially  an  abolition  of  the 
antithesis  between  the  Church  and  the  World,  and 
whatever  we  hear  nowadays  of  the  failure  of 
Protestantism  and  of  the  evils  which  it  has  brought  in 
its  train,  it  is  quite  certain  that  it  has  effectually  and 
irremediably  done  its  work,  and  that  the  world  since 
Luther's  time  has  become  a  very  different  place.  The 
Catholic  Church,  which  until  the  Reformation  had 
enshrined  and  appropriated  the  ideals  of  humanity, 
had  now  to  look  on,  while  in  each  of  the  nationalities 
of  modern  Europe  a  growing  band  of  idealists  began 
that  criticism  of  institutions  and  that  promulgation  of 
new  ideals,  which  have  set  up  as  their  goal  the 
realization  of  the  City  of  God,  not  in  an  invisible 
communion  of  saints  but  in  the  body  politic  of  each 
nation.  The  aspirations  of  the  individual  soul,  which 
had  formerly  burned  themselves  away  in  prayer  and 
contemplation,  now  gave  birth  to  lyrical  prophecies 


120  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

of  the  perfectibility  of  human  society,  and  the  concep- 
tion  of  heaven  itself  began  to  pale  before  the  concep- 
tion of  an  ideal  republic.  What  would  Thomas  a 
Kempis  have  thought  of  the  world  revealed  to  us  in 
George  Fox's  Journals,  the  England  of  Milton  and 
Harrington  and  Gerard  Winstanley  ?  What  would  he 
have  thought  of  the  adoption  by  the  world  of  some  of 
the  very  watchwords  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven?  of 
the  attempt  to  remove  from  the  world  those  evils 
which  were  blessings  in  so  far  as  they  drove  the 
bleeding  human  spirit  to  the  bosom  of  God?  How, 
looking  further  into  the  future,  would  he  have  heard 
the  assertion  of  Mazzini  that  true  religion  comes  from 
the  world,  in  its  new  transformation  '*  the  people  *'r 
or  the  still  more  valiant  assertion  of  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  that  men  can  only  be  made  virtuous  by  Acts  of 
Parliament?  But  even  if  we  pay  Protestantism  the 
compliment  of  saying,  as  we  do,  that  it  represented 
the  progressive  force  of  humanity,  we  should  be 
claiming  too  much  for  it  if  we  said  that  it  carried  its 
forces  in  good  order  into  the  modern  world.  The 
word  Reformation,  which  we  apply  loosely  to  the 
exodus  from  the  old  chruch  of  many  of  her  more 
honest  and  earnest  spirits,  is  really  more  appropriate 
to  what  we  call  the  Catholic  Reaction  which  resulted 
from  it,  and  a  somewhat  similar  reaction  began  among 
the  idealists  themselves  at  the  time  of  the  French 
Revolution  when  a  certain  proportion  of  them 
recoiled  from  the  reckless  propaganda  of  Rousseau. 
The  celebrated  Anglo-Irishman,  Edmund  Burke,  was 
the  leader  in  this  reaction  :  for  whom  it  may  be  claimed 
that  he  destroyed  the  general  taste  for  ideal  republics 
by    substituting    an    almost    mystical    conception    of 


A  CAUSE  121 

society  and  of  the  state,  from  which  even  the  most 
factious  revolutionary  could  hardly  with  decency 
withhold  his  homage.  The  state,  he  proclaimed,  *'  is 
a  partnership  in  all  science;  a  partnership  in  all  art; 
a  partnership  in  every  virtue  and  in  all  perfection.  As 
the  ends  of  such  a  partnership  cannot  be  obtained  in 
many  generations,  it  becomes  a  partnership  not  only 
between  those  who  are  living,  but  between  those  who 
are  living,  those  who  are  dead,  and  those  who  are  to 
be  born.  Each  contract  of  each  particular  state  is 
but  a  clause  in  the  great  primaeval  contract  of  eternal 
society,  linking  the  lower  with  the  higher  natures, 
connecting  the  visible  and  invisible  world,  according 
to  a  fixed  compact  sanctioned  by  the  inviolable  oath 
which  holds  all  physical  and  all  moral  natures,  each 
in  their  appointed  place,"  etc.  Many  of  the  poets 
in  these  countries,  who  had  shown  symptoms  of 
defection  from  the  parent  state,  went  over  whole- 
heartedly to  this  champion  of  natural  law  in  society, 
just  as  on  the  continent  a  good  many  of  them  returned 
to  the  fold  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Words v/orth  in 
particular,  who  had  begun  his  career  as  a  revolu- 
tionary, became  one  of  Burke's  most  illustrious  and 
not  least  influential  disciples,  not  so  much  by 
advocating  his  political  doctrines  directly  as  by  hi 
sacred  zeal  in  adopting  a  strictly  Burkian  conception 
of  his  vocation  as  a  poet.  Returning  out  of  the 
uproar  of  the  French  Revolution  to  his  native  hills, 
he  had  found  as  he  revisited  his  childish  haunts,  on 
the  one  hand,  that  the  '*  rights  of  man  "  no  longer 
kindled  in  his  breast  the  old  exultations  and  indigna- 
tions, and,  on  the  other,  that  he  had  entered  without 
knowing  it  a  new  and  hardly  discovered  poetic  region, 


122  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

watered  with  the  springs  of  intuition,  and  where  the 

universal  soul  stretched  away  like  a  vast  inland  sea. 

Yes,  the  Catholic  Church  was  right,  not  indeed  in 
thinking  that  the  world  must  inevitably  jeturn  to  her, 
or  that  it  would  be  good  for  the  world  that  it  should 
do  so,  but  that  the  idealists  who  went  forth  from  her 
would  suffer  an  inevitable  disillusionment  and 
deterioration  in  substituting  for  the  ideal  of  a  church 
the  ideal  of  human  solidarity  and  progress.  They 
have  indeed  accomplished  great  things  :  liberated 
thought  in  human  affairs  and  set  the  world  moving,  it 
may  be  toward  some  far-off  divine  event ;  brought  the 
whole  thought  of  the  world  to  bear  on  the  affairs  of 
the  world.  It  is  probable  that  never  was  a  time  when 
the  world,  taking  into  account  its  vast  problems  of 
population  and  supply,  eind  the  magnitude  of  its 
schemes,  was  more  equitably  governed,  and  that  never 
was  so  close  an  inquisition  made  into  whatever  savours 
of  oppression  and  cruelty.  Abuses  which  a  few 
hundred  years  ago  attracted  no  attention  are  now 
blazoned  and  paraded  to  catch  the  universal  indigna- 
tion. People  who  lived  under  no  particular  sense  of 
wrong  are  now  sought  out  and  convinced  that  they 
are  trampled  upon.  But  have  our  idealists  who  have 
brought  all  this  about  not  lost  hold  of  some  of  those 
fiery  convictions  which  they  carried  with  them  out 
of  the  mother  church  when  they  first  began  to  set  up 
theocracies  and  republics?  Have  they  maintained  in 
its  purity  any  transcendental  principle  or  belief  of 
which  they  can  say  to  one  another  *'  In  hoc  signo 
vinces"?  Have  they  established  any  ideal  superior 
to  that  of  the  common  man?  Have  they  produced 
any  writing  with  eoiything  like  the  solace  and  certitude 


A  CAUSE  123 

of  Thomas  a  Kempis's  Imitation  ?  Have  they  found 
out  anything,  or  even  agreed  upon  anything  ?  Perhaps 
one  of  the  most  really  melancholy  of  all  the  modern 
poets,  though  he  was  also  one  of  the  most  beautiful, 
was  the  poet  whose  ideals  were  entirely  mundane  and 
who  believed  in  the  perfectibility  of  society— William 
Morris;  and  who  of  the  moderns,  at  all  events  in  the 
Anglo-Saxon  world,  have  achieved  in  their  person- 
alities an  independent  world  of  transcendental 
affirmation,  if  not  Blake  and  Walt  Whitman,  of  whom 
one  was  crazy  and  the  other  a  poet  who  could  not 
sing,  while  both  were  as  little  disposed  to  interfere 
in  the  conduct  of  the  world  as  Socrates  or  Jesus. 

Nevertheless,  when  all  is  said,  we  are  citizens, 
concerned  in  the  reign  of  justice  and  the  remedy  of 
abuses  :  answerable  even,  to  the  small  extent  of  our 
personal  relations,  for  establishing  on  the  side  of  the 
globe  a  mankind  which  will  enable  it  to  look  the 
other  stars  in  their  faces.  Is  the  cause  of  the  Ideal 
then  social  rather  than  personal,  as  Mazzini  dreamed 
and  as  our  own  intellectuals  are  coming  more  and 
more  to  believe?  Religions  hitherto  have  been  in  the 
nature  of  consolations  and  compensations  for  the 
defects  of  life,  and  the  most  comprehensive  in  its  scope 
of  all  religions,  Buddhism,  begins  with  the  postulate 
that  life  is  sorrow.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  matter  of  common 
experience  that,  as  we  are  constituted  individually, 
the  lower  we  pitch  our  hopes  the  better  for  our 
happiness.  Life  is  full  of  surprises  and  satisfactions 
when  we  postulate  it  as  something  from  which  to 
escape;  indeed,-  some  such  principle  is  the  whole 
rationale  of  art  and  religion  as  hitherto  understood. 
But  such  an  attitude  towards  social  life  seems  hardly 


1 24  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

now  to  befit  us  as  citizens  :  even  though  we  may  have 
no  great  faith  in  an  ideal  republic  or  in  the  perfectibility 
of  the  race,  we  should  be  pusillanimous  if  we  did  not 
look  forward  to  the  renovation  of  a  system  of  things 
which  still  makes  life  a  physical  misery  for  at  least  a 
large  minority.  Does  the  recognition  that  life  is 
sorrow,  with  which  all  religion  has  hitherto  begun » 
not  then  apply  to  the  general  life  of  humanity?  Or 
would  the  religious  standpoint  itself  be  altered  if  its 
social  setting  were  transformed?  On  the  answer  ta 
this  question  depends  the  answer  to  the  question 
whether  the  religious  ideas  with  which  mankind  has 
been  indoctrinated,  chiefly  through  Buddhism  and 
Christianity,  have  now  been  worked  out  and  have 
begun  to  be  displaced  by  the  germs  of  a  new  spiritual 
principle.  Rightly  or  wrongly,  we  have  admitted  the 
ideals  of  progress  and  politics  into  our  conception  of 
religion.  **  The  individual,"  said  Mazzini,  **  is  no 
longer  the  aim  of  human  endeavour.  The  individual 
will  appear  in  new  sacredness  when,  by  the  promulga- 
tion of  the  social  law,  the  rights  and  duties  of 
individual  existence  are  made  to  harmonize  with  that 
law.'*  The  drawing  together  of  thoughtful  and 
scrupulous  men,  which  formerly  produced  a  church, 
now  produces  ideals  of  the  purification  of  politics  and 
international  relations,  of  national  and  social  integrity. 
From  a  perfectly  well-ordered  world,  from  which  all 
discontent  has  been  eliminated,  in  which  machinery 
has  taken  over  all  menial  tasks,  while  the  individual,, 
certain  of  seventy  or  eighty  years  of  interesting  life^ 
has  learned  to  think  in  terms  of  human  and  not  merely 
individual  destiny,  will  man  continue  to  turn  from 
the  external  to  the  inward  world,  or  find  any  meaning 


A  CAUSE  12S 

in  such  language  as  that  of  Thomas  a  Kempis  :  **  Truly 
it  is  misery  to  live  upon  earth.  The  more  a  man 
desires  to  be  spiritual,  the  more  bitter  does  this  present 
life  become  to  him,  because  he  understands  better,, 
and  sees  more  clearly  the  weakness  of  corrupt  human 
nature.  For  to  eat  and  drink,  to  watch  and  sleep,  to 
rest  and  work,  and  to  be  subject  to  all  the  necessities 
of  nature,  is  truly  a  great  misery  and  affliction  to  a 
devout  man,  who  would  gladly  be  released." 

Whatever  changes  are  in  store  for  humanity,  one 
thing  is  certain,  that  so  far  it  has  never  shown  itself 
at   its   best   when   it   has   been   most   prosperous;   or 
rather,  it  is  out  of  the  very  fulness  of  life  that  arises 
the  sense  of  its  imperfection.     As  we  are  constituted, 
no  sooner  are  we  happy  than  we  begin  to  hate  our- 
selves.    Elizabethan  England,  had  it  only  known,  was 
happy,  but  that  very  love  of  life  which  empurples  the 
page  of  the  Shakspearean  drama  fostered  a  thousand 
germs  of  restless  activity  which  was  soon  to  involve 
the    destiny    of    England    in    unimagined    cares    and 
responsibilities;  and  in  our  own  age,  throughout  the 
states  of  the  world,  when  mankind  seemed  in  a  fair 
way  to  the  achievement  of  social  well-being,  a  vague 
dissatisfaction    arose,    threatening    the    dissolution    of 
society,  and  forcing  the  governments  into  suspicion  of 
one  another  and  finally  into  conflict.     In  the  life  of  the 
individual  no  less  than  in  society  there  is  left  a  little 
bit  of  chaos  in  regard  to  which  man  plays  the  part  of 
creator,  and  it  is  not  so  much  to  remedy  the  imperfec- 
tion of  life  as  out  of  its  essential  nature  that  arise  all 
the  vital  causes  and  all  the  types  of  human  heroism. 
**  Unless   above  himself   he   can   erect  himself,   how 
poor  a  thing  is  man  ! ' '     The  highest  manifestation  of 


126  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

the  value  of  life  is  the  self-sacrifice  of  the  hero,  who 
actually  proves  in  his  life  and  if  needful  by  his  death 
that  human  nature  is  competent  to  achieve  certainty, 
in  the  realization  of  which  all  the  consolations  of 
ordinary  experience  fall  away  as  of  little  account. 
To  the  fact  of  the  heroic  experience  all  religion,  all 
morality,  all  poetry  attaches  itself,  and  is  enabled  to 
look  once  again  on  nature  as  in  the  morning  of  the 
world.  Tradition  is  by  its  means  recovered,  and  the 
human  story  is  seen  to  hang  on  consistent  threads,  so 
fine  as  to  be  imperceptible  yet  so  strong  as  to  carry 
suspended  on  them  the  entire  mass  of  historical 
achievement.  Through  every  heroism  the  poet  in 
man  receives  a  new  access  of  creative  instinct,  the 
believer  a  new  confirmation  of  vision,  all  men 
according  to  their  deeds  and  dispositions  a  silent 
rebuke  or  encouragement;  and  the  human  faculties, 
which  scatter  like  hounds  where  the  trail  is  false,  are 
recalled  as  by  the  horn  of  the  huntsman.  To  achieve 
this  certitude  in  thought  and  action  is  the  dream  to 
which  every  youth  is  bom. 

The  interference  of  religious  idealists  in  the  affairs 
of  the  world  reached  its  climax,  at  all  events  in 
England,  at  the  time  of  the  Puritan  Revolution,  and 
that  revolution,  even  at  the  height  of  its  success, 
proved  to  be  a  dreadful  exposure  of  theocracy  as  a 
principle  of  government  in  a  modern  State.  Cromwell, 
the  Lord's  Anointed,  having  deeply  dissatisfied  true 
believers  by  his  adoption  of  a  purely  mundane 
toleration,  sat  uneasily  on  his  throne,  haunted  at  night 
by  terrors;  and  his  secretary  Milton,  even  in  the  act 
of  inditing  his  master's  messages,  was  abandoning  his 
plan  of  the  historic  glorification  of  his  country  and 


A  CAUSE  127 

beginning  to  dream  of  Paradise  as  something 
irretrievably  lost.  As  a  consequence  of  this  disillu- 
sionment, a  vaguely  defined  community  of  lately 
militant  idealists,  the  forefathers  of  our  own  Intellec- 
tuals— Swift  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century 
reckoned  them  in  the  Tale  oj  a  Tub  at  about  10,000 — 
found  themselves  with  their  occupation  gone,  without 
a  cause  or  a  belief,  and  falling  into  all  kinds  of 
contentions  among  themselves  :  in  a  position,  in  fact, 
not  without  some  analogy  to  what  we  might  imagine 
would  have  been  the  position  of  the  Chosen  People  if 
Moses  had  failed  to  get  them  across  the  Red  Sea  and 
they  had  all  been  transported  back  to  Egypt.  They 
would  in  that  case  have  been  put  to  their  old  task  of 
manufacturing  bricks  without  straw,  and  would  have 
suffered  hardships  severer  than  any  with  which  the 
sufferings  of  Grub  Street  could  be  compared ;  but  after 
a  while  their  talents  and  their  solidarity  would  have 
told,  and  in  time  they  would  have  risen  as  they  had 
done  before  to  an  influential  position  in  the  public 
affairs  of  Egypt.  And  so  it  was  with  the  idealists  of 
England  after  their  downfall  at  the  Restoration  and 
the  discomfiture  of  their  attempt  under  such  men  as 
Cromwell  and  Milton  to  build  with  brick  and  stone  the 
City  of  God.  Little  by  little,  with  new  and  delightful 
forms  of  literary  composition,  they  made  themselves 
acceptable  and  indispensable,  and  as  time  went  on 
they  dared  once  again  to  criticize  institutions  in  the 
light  of  their  own  ideals.  The  result  was — in  France 
the  great  Revolution;  and  in  England,  where  the 
germs  of  that  Revolution  were  hatched,  their  establish- 
ment in  an  authoritative  position,  mainly  through  the 
Press.     The  tendency  of  our  Intellectuals  has  of  late 


128  ANGLO-IRISH  ESSAYS 

been  to  offer  advice  to  the  ordinary  citizen  in  every 
province  of  civic  activity,  and  they  have  ceased 
altogether  to  be  distinguished  by  any  special  fervour 
of  belief  in  **  God,  freedom,  immortality."  One 
suspects,  however,  that  the  ordinary  citizen  can  look 
after  his  own  affairs  surprisingly  well.  It  is  not  for 
guidance  in  mundane  matter's  that  the  man  of  affairs 
looks  to  the  man  of  thought — to  whom  in  general  he 
is  infinitely  well  disposed — but  for  something  which 
he  feels  that  he  has  not  got  himself  and  that  the 
thinker  ought  to  be  able  to  give  him. 

What  then  is  the  true  and  final  relation  of  idealists 
to  the  parent  community?  Much  depends  on  our 
notion  of  progress,  and  whether  we  regard  social 
stability  as  the  desideratum  in  a  state,  or  believe  in 
the  realization  of  the  ideal  in  society.  In  the  East, 
v^here  until  it  began  to  be  disturbed  by  the  West, 
spiritual  progress  only  was  cared  about,  the  true 
believer  is  the  recipient  of  alms,  which  the  ordinary 
householder  acquires  merit  in  bestowing.  In  our  own 
society  his  place  has  been  taken  by  corporate  bodies 
which  we  call  churches,  and  if  our  idealists  had 
concentrated  their  energies  on  the  things  of  the  spirit 
they  might  perhaps  even  now,  instead  of  scribbling 
out  their  souls  for  the  newspapers,  be  occupying  many 
of  those  delicious  country  parsonages  which  evoked 
one  of  Wordsworth's  beautiful  sonnets.  As  it  is, 
they  have  done  little  or  nothing  to  deserve  the  grateful 
support  of  society  in  consideration  of  any  transcen- 
dental doctrines  of  which  they  might  have  been  the 
repositories.  The  economic  relation  of  the  children 
of  light  to  the  world  has  indeed  been  conceived  quite 
definitely  by   the   religions  :    the   elect   should   be   the 


A  CAUSE  129 

poor,  the  objects  of  true  charity  and  the  recipients  of 
alms.  Granted  that  our  civiUzation  will  abolish 
pauperism,  and  that  the  human  race  by  perfecting 
mechanism  will  secure  at  once  plenty  and  leisure, 
there  will  still  remain  the  distinction  between  the  rich 
and  the  poor,  only  the  poor  will  be  so  voluntarily.  A 
certain  number  of  men  will  always  refuse  this  world's 
riches.  Accepting,  therefore,  as  natural  the  general 
division  of  men  into  rich  and  poor,  a  perfect  state  of 
society  would  be  that  in  which  the  rich  would  give 
Avillingly  to  the  poor,  and  in  doing  so  would  be 
assisting  a  cause  and  an  ideal  in  which  they  them- 
selves believed.  In  the  present  spiritual  anarchy  we 
know  not  what  rascality  we  may  be  supporting  when 
^we  give  alms  :  we  may  be  giving  to  publicans  (in  the 
modern  sense)  and  sinners;  but  if  we  gave  to  a 
Buddhist  Bhikku  or  a  Franciscan  brother,  to  Walt 
Whitman  or  William  Blake,  we  should  know  where 
OUT  money  went,  and  that  we  were  laying  up  for 
ourselves  treasures  in  heaven.  The  Irish  beggar  who 
bursts  into  a  torrent  of  intercession  for  us  on  receipt 
of  our  copper  has  a  true  notion  of  economic  charity 
and  perhaps  even  believes  in  the  soundness  of  our 
investment,  at  all  events  gives  us  encouraging  assur- 
ance that  our  money  is  not  lost.  Assuming  that  a 
life  of  poverty  is  the  best,  that  in  nakedness  of  worldly 
^oods  a  man  is  brought  nearest  to  spiritual  reality, 
then  if  we  cannot  live  the  ideal  ourselves  it  is  well 
that  we  should  enable  it  to  be  lived. 


